March, 1994 - Volume 11, No 3
■$3.95 (NZ$7 inc. GST)
Australian Commodore &
DBlfit
maun QVp-iitt/j:
Id] t&hiii „ u i ikf j
Registered by Australia Post Publication No. NBG 6fi^
nrint
r
&& DIP Cvluisil
Recommended Retail Price
Sigmacom ^ 524 9846
m
Leaders in Quality, Service & Price.
CD ROM Drives and Systems
NEC CD ROM Drives. SCSI interface supports MAC, PC & Amiga. Ensures superior
performance, reliability and expandability.
CDR - 25 Ext. Portable, Kodak Photo CD Comp. $499
CDR- 84 Internal Multispin Multisession, Kodak
Photo CD Compatible 256k cache SCSI-2 $699
CDR-74 External Multispin Multisession, Kodak
Photo CD Compatible 256k cache SCSI-2 $849
Xetec Driver for Amiga, all CD formats Add $99
March
CD Special
^^^5W^/-^^Mw<w^ ^
Collection on CD
nos 1-910. '
^/__ *Frec with Xetec Driver
-J
Hard Drive Corner
Quantum SCSI &_
FAST SCSI-2
52Mb Demos $249
80Mb Demos $299
] 05Mb Demos $349
120Mh $399
240Mb SELLOUT $499
270Mb FAST SCSI-2 $549
340Mb FAST SCSI-2 $649
525Mb FAST SCSI-2 $1299
108Gb FAST SCSI-2 Special $1799
Amiga 1200
Ad J -on 8: Replacement HDs
Add Extra 40Mb drive $249
Replace 170Mb FAST <limWh*>$449
Replace 250Mb FAST (i.imwsb) $649
Seagate FAST IDE
Drives for A4000
Extra 120Mb 5199
260Mb S499
340Mb $649
450Mb $899
525Mb $1299
Bernoulli Multidisk
System
Transportable SCSI drive with .35MB
to 150MB removable media.
Price for Drive & cartridge.
Multidisk 150 Insider SI350
Multidisk 150 ^portable $1550
Multidisk 90 Pro Insider $1260
Multidisk 90 Pirn T portable $1420
Maestro
14,400 bps
Fax/Data/Modem
^HBf
After a survey of all available
Fax/data 14.4 modems, Maestro
came out in front. These
modems come packaged with
GPFax fax software at the
incredible price of
$599.
RAM Chips
& PCMCIA's
A590 2Mb $199
GVP Impact 500 2Mb $139
A600 1Mb Card ^ $135
2Mb PCMCIA $299
4Mb PCMCIA $399
A2091 2Mb -- $199
GVP Impact 2000 2Mb $199
A3000 4Mb ZIPs $399
A4UV0 1Mb SIMM $149
M)00 4Mb SIMM $349
udio
GVP Digital Sound Studio
$169
Sunrise AD1012 12 bit DSP Card
$950
Sunrise AD516 16 bit DSP Card
$Call
Accelerators
GVP A530 80Mb HD 4Mb RAM
$1499
GVP A123Q II 40MHz 030 SCSI 1Mb $999
GVP A1 230 II other conflgs
SCall
6VP G- FORCE Accel 4C/40M
$1199
GVP 040 A2Q00 33Mhz4Mb RAM
$1995
A2620 Accel 2Mb Ex-Demo
$399
A2620 Accel 4Mb Ex-Demo
$599
A2630 Accel 2Mb Ex-Demo
$699
A2630 Accel 4Mb Ex-Demo
$749
G-Force 25MHz Ex-Demo
$799
Base Machines
CD32
$699
Amiga 500 512K Ex- Demo
$249
Amiga 1200 40Mb HD
$CaH
Amiga 2000
$449
Amiga 2000 Ex-Demo
$349
Amiga 4000 88030 CPU 4Mb 1 20HD $Call
Amiga 4000 88O40 CPU 8Mb 1 20HD $CaII
Emulators
GVP PC2B6 IBM Emulate
$199
XT Bridgetioard Ex-Demo
$100
AT Bridgeboard Ex-Demo
$399
Commodore 386SX
$999
Golden Gate 386SX Bridgeboard
$995
EMPLANT Emulator Caid
$799
AT-Once Emulator Ex-Demo
$199
Hard Drives (bare drive only)
17CMbHD for A1200 swap for 40Mb $449
250Mb HO for A1 200 swap for 40Mb $649
Additional 40Mb HD for A1200
$249
260Mb Seagate IDE HD for A4000
S499
525Mb Seagate IDE HD for A4000
$1199
52Mb Quantum SCSI HD
$299
120Mb Quantum SCSI HD
$399
170Mb Quantum SCSI HD
$449
£40Mb Quantum SCSI-2 HO
$499
270Mb Quantum FAST SCSI-2
$549
340Mb Quantum FAST SCSI-2
$649
525Mb Quantum FAST SCSI-2
$1299
1.08Gb Quantum FAST SCSI-2
$1799
525MD Maxtor MXT FAST SCSI-2
$1899
1.2Gb Maxtor MXT FAST SCSI-2
$2599
Syquest
88Mb C Removable w/Carl
$799
105Mb SCSI-2 Removable wfCart
$699
Syquest250Mb Tape Cartridge
$79
44 Mb Syquest Cartridge
$149
88Mb Syquest Cartridge
$189
1 05Mb Syquest Cartridge
$125
Bernoulli 150Mb Insider w/Cart
$1350
Bernoulli 150Mb Transport w/Cart
$1550
150Mb Bernoulli Cartridges
$280
Hard Drive Controllers
GVP Impact 500 HD 52Q Ex-Demo
$499
GVP Impact 500 HD 80Q
$749
GVP Impact 500 HD 120Q
$949
GVP Impact 2000 HCB No Drive
$349
GVP Impact 2000 520
$599
GVP Impact 2O0012OQ
$749
GVP Impact 2000 240Q
$949
GVP Imapct 4008 No Drive
$349
A590 20Mb HD OMb RAM Ex-Demo $399
A590 20Mb HO 1Mb RAM Ex- Demo
$449
A5S0 20Mb HD 2Mb RAM Ex- Demo
$499
Commodore A2091
$199
Commodore A2091 Ex-Demo
$149
GVP SCSI/RAM A1 200 No FPU OK
$599
GVP SCSI/RAM A 1 200 No FPU 1 Mb $699
GVP SCSI/RAM A1 200 No FPU 2Mb $799
GVP SCSI/RAM A1200 8B2 4Mb
$895
Z3 Fastlane SCSI-2 Controller
$995
CD ROM Drives
NEC CDR-74 External with s/w
$949
NEC CDR-25 External with sA»
S599
NEC CDR-84 Internal with s/w
$699
Xetec CD ROM Driver Software Kit
$149
Monitors
1 084S Stereo Monitor Ex-Demo
$249
Commodore 1942 Bisync Monitor
$649
Sony 1 4" Trinitron
$899
NEC 3D Multisync Monitor Ex-Demo $699
NEC 5D 20" Multisync Monitor Demo $1 999
Commodore 1940 Bisync Monitor
$499
RAM Expansion
512KforAE00
$59
A601 IMbRAMforABOO
$135
Ad Ram 4Mb tor A500 0k
$175
ChipEx 2Mb CHIP RAM with Agnus
$299
MBX12O0 RAM Card 68881 OK
$275
MBX12O0 RAM Card 68881 2Mb
$499
MBX1200 RAM Card 68881 4Mb
$599
2Mb PCMCIA Card tor A600IA1 2O0
$299
4Mb PCMCIA Card tor A6O0/A12O0
$399
BAM Chips
1 Mb x 8 SIMM Ram (GVP)
$100
1Mb 32-bit SIMM for GVP Accel.
$100
4Mb 32-bit SIMM for GVP Accel.
$399
4Mb 32-bit SIMM for A4000
$349
4Mb ZIP Static Column RAM A3000
$399
2Mb DIP Ram for A590/A2091
$199
Software
Aladdin 4D
$529
Amiback 2 * Tools
$99
Anim Workshop
$99
Arexx Cookbook
$89
Art Department Pro v2.5
$275
Art Expressions
$275
Bars & Pipes Pro V2
$449
Broadcast Trtler Super Hi-Res
$299
Cinemorph
$99
Deluxe Paint AGA
S150
Devpac 3
$169
Directory Opus
$109
Distant Suns v4.1
$99
El ectric Thesaurus
$59
Essence tor Imagine
$99
Final Copy II UK
S139
Final Writer
S219
Fractal Universe
$69
Gigamem
$139
GPFax
$149
Hi-Soft High Speed Pascal
$199
Hi-Soft Power Basic
$99
Hotlinks 1.1
$89
Hotlrnks Additions
$159
Image FX
$449
Imagemaster R/T
$229
Imagine V2
$349
Intro Cad Plus
$99
KDV5
$20
Megadlsc
$17-95
Montage
S299
Morph Plus
$299
Morprrus for Imagine
$169
Pagestream 2.2
$159
Powercopy III Copier
$99
Professional Calc V2
$229
Professional Draw V3
$199
Professional Page V4.1
$149
Proper Grammer II
$89
New Products for 1994
GVP A 1230 Series II
40MHz/50Mhz 68030 +SCSI & RAM
For the Amiga 1200.
This combo board offers the
option of either 40 or 50Mhz
68030 processor, optional FPU,
space for up to 32Mb 60ns 32-bit
RAM and SCSI controller. '
A 1230 Series II with 40Mhz,
IMbRam $799
Call for price on 50Mhz, SCSI,
more RAM, FPU, etc.
GVP TBC Plus
Time Based Corrector/24-bit Frame Grabber
Professional Composite & Y/C video SFX generator with real
time 16.7m colour frame-grabber, SFX generator, with or
without SMPTE. Call for full details & Specs
With SMPTE $CalJ Without SMPTE $1649
40Mhz 68040 card for A4000 Soon!
An 040 card for the Amiga 4000 with SCSI-2 and RAM option
GVP A4000 SCSI +
A4000 SCSI card with space for up to 8Mb RAM ■
$349
March Specials:
Incredible Syquest Pricing!
88Mb Int. Drive" + Cartridge $799
88Mb Ext. Drive + Cartridge $899
105Mb 3.5" Int. Drive + Ctdg $699
105Mb 3.5" Ext. Drive + Ctdg $799
GVP G-Lock - Super Low Price $699
GVP EGS Spectrum 2mb - Save $150
Now only $995
GVP33Mhz040A2000 $1995
t^^tM
cuj
C0i_
8
CD 32 Titles
Zool
$69
Sleepwalker
$69
Nigel Mansells W/Cps
$69
Janles Pond 2
$69
D-GBneralion
$69 ■
Deep Core
$69
Whale's Voyage
$69
Pintail Fantasies
$69
Soon - Jurasic Park
TEA,
In Stock Wow
Trie fastest most reliable SCSI-2
card for the A3000/A4OOO with
space for up to an incredible 256
MB of 60ns RAM - $995
Features:
• Full 32 bit Zorro 3 ire auto config & DMA -
up to 20mb/sec transfir • SCSI, SCSI-2 & Fast SCSI-2 ■
Mourn R&W MSDOS formatted volumes • Speed
increases - CD ROM stds. • New Caching software.
V-LAB Framegrabber -
V-LAB Y/C & External V-I.AB for A1200
•These boards car now grab at an effective rate of 30
frames /sec. V-LAB is a 24bit framegrabber designed
to compliment the Retina or Harlequin boards. Both
have full Ad Pro and Imagemaster drivers, extensive
developer libraries and docs. Call for a Demonstration.
IGA Systems.
The BEST price on Amiga
Systems, guaranteed, PLUS
your Amiga is delivered 65
your door tree, die daj yon
buy it*.
l*Crc!itn Sydney only. Overnight
fur all otlirr ni:-tjttT' centres in
Australia. Only a little longer for
rural areas.)
Printers
Laser - Impact - Wax - Dye Sub.
HP Deskjet Portable $499
HP5Q0 Deskjet $699
HP 500C Colour Deskjet $899
HP 550C Colour Deskjet $ 1 299
Laserjet 4L $1499
Primera Wax Transfer $2099
Primeia Photo Realistic Dye Sub $Call
Prowrile 3.3
$129
Quarterback
$95
Quarterback Tools
S149
Real 3D V2
$699
Rexx Pius Compiler
$203
SASC Leflice C V6.3
$249
ScalaSOO
$149
Scala Multimedia MMflt 1
$299
Scala Multimedia MM300
$649
Softfacus
$95
Superbase Pro 4
$359
True Print 24
$109
TVPaint Retina
$899
Video Director Amiga
$199
Vista Pro V3
$99
Workbench V2.1 w/Rom
$149
CD ROM Software
Battlechess
CDDemo Vol I
CDDemo Vol 2
CDPD Vol 1
CDPD Vol 2
CDPD Vol 3
Fred Fisb
Fred Rsfi On-Line
NASA
Prey
17BITColleclSon
I7bit Continuation
EIMOITY
Xenon2
$59
$69
$69
$69
$69
$69
$69
$75
$59
$59
$69
$49
Spare Parts & Cables
6S882 Maths Co-p'r for A4QOO/030 $£99
2.0*2.05 huckster! ROM $69
8375 Agnus $69
3-way Internal SCSI Cable $35
PARNET Cable $35
A1 200 clock $69
Mice & Accessories
Axelen Optical Mouse
$89
Jin Colour Mouse
$39
Mouse Master
$69
Pan Mouse
$59
Video Products
DCTV
$499
Hectronic Design Y/C Genlock
$799
GVP Impact Vision + Splitter
$2499
GVP EGS Spectrum 2Mb
$995
GVP GLock Genlock Only
$699
GVPGLockVGA
$2149
GVP TBC+ No SMPTE
$1649
GVP TBC+ SMPTE
$Call
Meriki Genlock
$1199
Opaivlsion 24-Kt Display Card
$895
VTdi12
$289
Vidi24 RT
$699
VLAB Y/C Framegrabber
$699
VLAB External for A1 200
$550
Printers
HP DeskJet Portable
$499
HP 500 B&W DeskJet
$699
HP 500C Colour DeskJet
$899
HP 550C Colour DeskJet
snag
HP 4L Laser
$1499
Star SJ- 144 Heat fusion Colour
$1499
Modems
Interlink VOIDAX II Data/FaxfVoice
$649
Interlink VOIDAX III Data/Fax/Voice
$799
Maestro 1 4,400 Data Fax Modem
$599
Miscellaneous
A1 200 dual H Doable
$49
High Density Floppy Drive External
$299
High Density Floppy Drive Internal
$249
GVP Id Extender
$299
Keyboard Skin (suit all Amigas)
$39
Kickboard Plus
$59
Ktekstart 2.0*2.05 ROM
$69
Monitor Adaptor 23-1 5 pin
$39
Monitor Switch Box
$99
Qulcknet Ethernet Card
$475
Roclite External Floppy Drive
$165
Ex - Demo
All with warranty. Call for availability
Quantum Hard Drives
$Call
Amiga 2000 base machine
$349
EWemal Floppy Drives
$99
XT BMgeboard $100
AT Brklgeboard $399
AT-Onoe286/16 $199
GVP Impact 500 No Drive $300
GVP Impact 500 HD 52Q $599
A590 20Mb HD OMb RAM $349
A59020MbHD1MbRAM $399
A590 20Mb HD 2Mb RAM $499
A2091 HD Controller $149
Flicker Fixers from $249
1 084S Stereo Monitor $249
NEC 3D Multisync Monitor $699
Retina 2Mb & 4Mb $Call
68030 Accelerators - call lor details
Our Guarantee to You: At Stgmacom You will receive great service and
courteous advice on all new & used Amiga products.
If you are looking for something that
we do not have advertised, please
call as we have a lot more in stock
than we have space to list.
HE Ph: (02)
Sigmacom
524 9846
•Mobile: {018)25 7471
Facsimile: (02) 540 4554
Suite 17, 20 - 24 Gibbs Street,
Miranda NSW Australia 2228
Phone Orders Welcome
Online ordering - Call Labyrinth BBS (02) 580 5881
iGS 28/24
a
r.-
•WtJ
The EGS SPECTRUM from GVP fully supports the
Display Database starting with Kickstart 2.04. Any
programs that open screens from this list will run on
the EGS-2S724 SPECTRUM, including Workbench!
Even programs that do not support the Display
Database, but do use standard workbench-type
screens will also run on the EGS-28/24 SPECTRUM
in high-resolution colour.
The high-performance Paint package has abilities and
features not found in other paint software, including
Pantograph painting, turbo airbrush, and Real-Time
16-million colour painting tools.
The window-based architecture allows multiple
images to be opened at once on high-resolution
screens (up to 1600x1280) for editing, compositing,
and manipulating. This makes life easier than ever
before, and is unavailable on competitive products.
The EGS libraries make it easy to develop
professional-looking, high resolution, true colour
applications that are portable, reliable, and
productive.
Years of R&D have gone into these libraries and they
offer a very real and very flexible Retargelable
Graphics Operating System for the Amiga
platform.
PLUS the EGS Amiga Pass-Through allows native
displays to reach the monitor under software control.
This feature eliminates the need for two monitors
without sacrificing features.
■
Choose your
A1 200 System
Choose the system that most suits you, and if you
want something special . . , you know what to do.
' A1200 40Mb HD $995
A 1200 80Mb HD $1199
A 1 200 larger HDs 5CALL
Sigmacora A 1200 Office Pack -
For your small office or home business solution.
Amiga 1 200 40Mb HD - bundled with Final Writer
word processor, Pro Calc V2 $1399
Sigmacom A121H) Desktop Video Pack -
For the video .enthusiasts on a budget who want
serious control and an excuse for creative licence.
Amiga 1200 40Mb HD, 6Mb RAM, plus -
Scala MM21 1, GVP G Lock Genlock $2499
super
§299
SCALA MM300 S549
Echo control VCR &
Camera for direct editing
from Serlpt.ln stock Nowi
Vidi Amiga 12
Digitising hdw & sw for
real time composite &
S-Video capture. S2S9
VMI24 RT
Full 24M quality
dlejftlsing forafl Amjgsa
Safe Pries S69S
Vista Pro
Fractal Landscape
generating software at
Its best. $39
RcliI3D V2
Simply the best 3D on [
any plaltomn anywhere |
near Ihis price. S699 j
Montage
At last full 24bit titling
with direct AG A24blt
card support. $499
AdPro Version 2,5
Massive improvements,
multiple screens/res.
tools boxs, . SS75
Deluxe Paint AGA
AGA version ■ Full 24
bil painting.
#1Pajnt Software. $150
""«"'■'
AMI-BACK
Our Guarantee to You: At Sigmacom You
will receive great service and courteous
advice on all new & used Amiga products.
Directory OPUS
HD & Floppy Interface
Customise functions &
buttons. $109
I Power Copy
(Simple tlisK to disk &
tcopy work. Hardware
included. S89
Am! Back PI us Tools
Survive Hard Disk
backups or disasters,
plus optimise, $99
'roPage 4,1
This Ad was crested
entirely, concept to film,
onProPage4,1. S14S
ProCatc
Spreadsheet power &
function + 123 Wk file
compatible. $229
Ph: (02)
Sigmacom
524 9846
At Sigmacom AMIGA Software still leads
in power, performance and price.
All prices subject to change without notice-
• Mobile: (018) 25 7471 • Facsimile: (02) 540 4554
Suite 1 7, 20-24 Gibbs St. Miranda NSW Australia 2228
Phone Orders Welcome
Online ordering - Call Labyrinth BBS (02) 580 5881
Contents
Features
10 Image processing with
Image F/X
Image F/X is set to become the de facto
standard
1 4 Rocket power for your
A1200
The new A1 230 Turbo Plus board
18 VIDI Amiga 12/24
Capturing high quality images on any Amiga is
now affordable
23 Clean up your Video with
TBC
GVP's new time based corrector board
Vol 11 No 3 -March 1994
26 Scala MM 300
Synchronous Multimedia
This upgrade ot Scala has many impressive
new features
Regular
6
Media Watch
7
News
29
Education - Search for Sanchez
32
Help Line - Answers to your problems
36
Postscript is Postscript - Desktop publishing column
45
Hot PD - Fish on Rom
49
CanDo - Make your own Typing Tutor
54
Blitz Basic - Data Security
56
The C64 Column - New Life in Asia
58
Letters
60
On Screen Q&A
61
Online - Amiga Connection goes DL6
102
Art Gallery
Entertainment
56 Game Reviews
Body Blows Galactic, Zoo12, Aliens, Lotus Trilogy,
Flashback solution, Deep Force, The Patrician
74 Adventurers Realm
Hints & Tips, News, Trading Post, Problems,
Clever Contacts
78 CD 32 Game Reviews
Fire Force, Sensible Soccer, Zool
10
ImageF/X
29
Search for Sanchez
67
Zool 2
AMIGA Review
Performance Counts
(...NOT PROMISES)
GVP brings out the best in every Amiga
Great Valley Products delivers on our commitment to manufacture the most
innovative and technologically superior products for the Amiga.
A«D0 G-Farce 040-40"
This is it! Never before has such a powerful processor been
available for the Amiga! GVP puts a 40MHz Motorola '040 in
your A4C0U (LOT or (MO) and couples with it up to 32Mb of super
fast S1MM32 memory. We don't stop there... add the memory
expansion module mi gain a total 128Mb of RAM ) incredible! |
directly connected to this blazing processor. For maximum per-
formance, GVP offers a second optional module for a full 32-bit
SCSI IF AST interface, capable of data transfer speeds up to an
tmizing 1 0Mb per second! GVP GForce.-Experience the power!
CIRCLE 29 ON READER SERVICE CARD
A2fJ0» G-Force 040-33 Combo"'
The classic Combo taken to the Ultimate Extreme!
Your applications "will blaze with the awesome power of a
33Mhz 68040 processor. Give that muscle some room to flex
with room lor up to 64MB of fast 31-bit RAM. Of course our
award-winning SCSI II interface is integrated for maximum
performance and we include the bonus of ioExtender
capability with an extra parallel port and a buffered high-
speed serial port. Hot "toast" served here!
□ THOLE 3D ON HEADER SERVICE CARD
4098 SCSI2HST74O0B SCSI It"'
Bring the world of SCSI within your reach with either of these
versatile boards. Instantly gain access to thousands of peripherals
such as hard drives, SyQuest removable media and CD-ROMs.
Add up to 7 devices to your Amiga «M and smile. The 4098 is
equipped with i full 32-bit SCS11MST interface providing up to
an incredible 10Mb per second transfer speed. Eight 35 -bit,
standard 71-pin SIMM slots provide for up to an amazing 256Mb
of very fast RAM...NOW! A2000 users or those looking for the
most economical SCSI solution will find room for up to
8Mb of 16-bit memory on out 4008 card.
CIRCLE 3B ON READEH SERVICE CARD
111-24" A4000, Hie intimate Genlock
This is what yon have been searching for in a professional
quality genlock lor your Amiga 4000. This integrated hardware
design provides the crispest, cleanest genlocked video on the Amiga
desktop. With options for RGB, composite, SVHS, Betscam
and M-1I compatible inputs & outputs as well as a 24-bit, 167
million color frame-buner and real-time framegrabber/digitizei,
this is tie Amiga genlock every professional needs. GVP's
acclaimed ImageFX software as well as the powerful EGS
SpectraPaint, now included, complete this picture as the Ultimate
Genlock. An ermancementpackage mduding the professional
Component Transcoder |CT) is available separately!
DIHCLE SB ON READER SERVICE CARD
Til
TB C PlBS™ This professional quality [CCLR-
601 1, all digital time-base-corrector [TBC| uses
state-of-the-art 8-bit 4:2:2 video signal process-
ing.. Fins it provides a real-time video frame-
grabber and 167 million color frame-buffer . ..Mia there is a
hill SMTTE/EBU time-code receiver/generator and a separate
comb filter available. ..Plus this incredible product will
transcode composite and Y/C inputs. . , Wns a 3 channel
video input switcher [in composite and Y/Cf ...Plus
programmable video special effects!
CIRCLE S ON READER SERVICE CARD
G-Locfc" Bring live video, audio and Amiga graphics
together and do it on any Amiga! Get connected with the
world of video with our built-in transcoder to convert input
video to composite, Y/C, RGB or YUV outputs! Full support for
AGA systems as well as the 'classic' Amiga 500, 2000 and 3000.
Acclaimed interface controls mate thiseasytouseand simple
to control. Scala" users can purchase an EX module from Scala
distributors. With C-Lock's included dual- input audio panel
it's simply the best choice for every personal Amiga owner.
CIRCLE SB ON READER SERVICE CARD
Sf>4ECTftLHVI
EGS 28/24 SPBTIir
Co Beyond AGA Graphics with this real-time, 24-bit, true-
color graphics enhancement card. Programmable resolutions upi
to 1600x1280! 800x600 ill 24-bit! We include a custom display |
I pass-through cable for single-monitor i
use. Included with Spectrum is a
GVP exclusive, the acclaimed ECS
SjjecwPfliotjformeilyEGS-PAINT].
Get the standard that others ire developing for, EGS Spectrum.
Bring workstation paphic power to your Amiga today and see
what you've been missing!
CIRCLE 3 ON READER SERVICE CARD
Pertormanoe Series II At50Mhz,youcanown
the fastest A 1 100 in the world! Add up to 32MB of high-speed
32-bit RAM, today! With the added power oi a 50Mhz FPU, your
floating point operations have never been speedier. A 40MHz
version is also available for those who want thebest, but don't need
as much speed. A simple connection in the A 1 200 's f trap-door r
never voids a warranty, and with either Series 1 1 you have the
added versatility of out DMA Peripheral Port (DPT). Add the
fastest SCSI interface on any A120O with the AI291 SCSI Kit. It
just plugs in from the hack. Other expansion product4,including a
16-bit CD quality audio digitizerand playback unit as well as a
real-time video digitizer coming soon! Keep your options open!
CIRCLE 15 CN READER SERVICE CARD
>8+ U5SB+" Clearly Superior!
' ebsue! This is the quietest, most
professional and attractive digital sound sampler yet made.
Assembled of high-impact clear polycarbonate, this is the sound
sampler to own for the Amiga. The veisatile Digital Saund Stndio
software includes a muMaeeted program for sampling, editing,
song composition, stereo sound playback as well as creation of
.MOD format songs. New DSS 3.0 software now supports direct-
to-disk [hard disk! [ recording and playback. New real-time effects
and powerful playback and editing features as well as an even
more versatile and powerful interface,
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if you would like to send a Fas, Press 2.
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scheduled, time/date stamped and call
you when you have new mail, get.PhonePak VFX 2.0 today!
Fully integrated, allowing urilimited mailboxes and
private fas receiving. Send faxes Irom any program that
prints. Call in remotely and retrieve faxes sent earlier.
Plain paper ot paperless faxing. Call routing with
Centrex/FBX support, and more!
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io Extender"
Feeling trapped? Let GVP extend your horizons with
our easy-to-use ioExtender. Contained on a single card, you will
find an additional parallel port, allowing you to connect a printer
and a digitizer [such as DSSJ+I at the same time. No more messy,
unreliable switch boxes! To speed you on your way, we include a
high-speed, FB70 buffered serial port. No more dropped data or
bogged-down computers when transferring data via modem jat
speedT in excess of 57, MO! ). Optional R5422 Ki t or second R S232
Kit are available for even greaterversatiliry. Free your ports and
regain performance on your Amiga with iolxrender!
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knagef X™ This revolutionary must-have-program
combines the traditional elements of image processing with
amazing high-end special effects and morphmg tools. Image FX is
east-to-use in every respect. It supports image file formats in use
on nearly any platform from Macs to SGI machines.It has built in
virtual memory for all Amigas, no more 'out-of-memory'
problems! ImageFX even incorporates an on-line help system!
ImageFX includes FVF1YTHING you need in one low cost pack-
age: 24-3>it painting, scanner modules, image format conversion,
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Distributed in Australia by .
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World
506 Dorset Road, Croydon, Victoria 3136, Australia.
Phone: 03 725 3233 Fax 03 725 6765
Editorial
Conundrums at Commodore Australia
By now the situation may well be different, so
take all of this with a grain of salt. However, as we
prepared this issue to go to press, things were
looking a little out of sorts over at Commodore Business
Machine's head office, at Lane Cove in Sydney.
There has been little official word about what is taking
place, however we can be sure of one thing. In the long
term, it is very likely the Amiga will continue to be
distributed and supported in Australia - and probably by a
company with the word Commodore in its name some-
where. However, in the meantime you will no doubt hear
or read about the current situation. It is true that an admin-
istrator has been called in by the directors. His job is to
sort out the Australian company's current financial diffi-
culties - and they are serious.
He will be working closely with the major creditors to
decide what is to be done to sort things out. Here is where
the situation gets kind of vague, so the less said the better.
But, right now there are possible problems with warranty
repairs, and the supply of Amigas is likely to be inter-
rupted for a short time. We are however assured this will
all be rectified quick smart and that there is no cause for
alarm.
Reading this month's Commodore Update on our new
Future Watch page, it is plain that Commodore is doing
very well - world-wide. The future of the Amiga is not in
doubt. The European operation is having great success
with a very aggressive campaign spear-headed by the CD32
player. They have gone head to head against Sega, and
appear to be winning. Recent figures showed CD32 as the
biggest selling CD based device in the U.K. - with Sega a
close second and PC CD-ROM drives trailing in third
place. Titles are starting to push through, and the FMV
module is said to be available at Dick Smith stores in
Australia right now - although video titles are a little more
difficult to come by.
So, whilst our local situation may suffer a few ups and downs
over the next month, all should be well again very soon.
You may notice a few
changes taking place to Amiga
Review. Your feedback is im-
portant - so please feel free to
pass on your comments in the
knowledge that all will be read
and considered. You can fax
the editor directly on (02) 816
4714 or write to us at Amiga
Review, 21 Darley Road,
Randwick 2031.
The Opal Technology saga continues, however despite
rumours to the contrary, the Video Processor is very close.
It includes the Roaster, Framegrabber and Genlock allow-
ing video transitions, wipes and page flips. The device will
be on show at NAB in March, and should be shipping
downunder soon after.
Opal Technology may well lead a revolution in desktop
video in Australia, as they bring the price of high perform-
ance equipment into the reach of you and me. Stay tuned.
Andrew Farrell
DP-Tute from Toad
Software
A couple of issues back we mentioned a
Dpaint tutorial from the folk at Toad Soft-
ware. It seems we screwed up on the phone
number. The correct number is (08) 251
3655.
Published by:
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467 Balmain Road,
Production:
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:: L.iiyfield
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Ph: (02) 818 5099
AMIGA Review
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For Professional and Home Users
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Media
Watch
Film Graphics
Monte Boyd of Cremorne NSW,
who previously sent us the spotting of
Amigas in Jurassic Park, has found
another one. While doing work expe-
rience at the production house Film
Graphics, he drew his own 10 second
animation and had to do a line test -
doing an animation of the pencil draw-
ings to ensure everything lines up.
Film Graphics use for this purpose
an Amiga hooked up to Digi-View - a
simple, fast, cheap digitising platform.
And yes, Monte, this time you
WOULD have got a free subscription
- if you hadn't been outclassed by one
of our other correspondents - sorry
mate!
The Rachel Papers
Mick Gooch of Lowood, Queens-
land, spotted two Amigas - well. Com-
modore references, anyway. During
the movie The Rachel Papers on Chan-
nel 9 on the 6th of February, an un-
mistakable A5O0, 1084S monitor and
lumpen A1010 external drive showed
up. And during the SBS World Soccer
show on Saturday the 29th of January,
the French First Division team Paris
Saint Guienne has a Commodore logo
emblazoned on the back of their strip
and the curved Amiga logo on the
front. Commodore are obviously their
major sponsors!
Robert Pogainis of Beecroft NSW
also spotted the "Rachel Papers"
Amiga (or was it the Rachel Files?
Near enough...), but has been keeping
an eye out for quite a few others, too.
He spotted the A 1200 on Real Life on
the 27th of January - which, if we
recall, was another one of those beat-
up stories about computer porn. Ah
well, it was an Amiga anyway. He
noticed the A3000 that shows up in a
lot of AV Jennings ads, as part of
their home design system.
Hospital
Robert didn't know what it was used
for, but there's definitely an old Amiga
somewhere in the Sydney Adventist
Hospital's in-house TV system, since
once he noticed an unmistakable
Kickstart 1.2 hand on the TV. A BBC
Hardware store at Thornier gh uses an
A500 with A590 hard drive to run a
program to show what a digitised
house looks like in different colour
schemes. A while ago, during an ad-
vertisement for the Happy Hockers or
some such tarted up pawnbroker fhere
was a WB2/3 mouse pointer - there's
a Amiga doing the tiling there, and an
absent minded recording engineer!
Robert also clarified the spotting
we had a few months back about an
Amiga controlling a surgical laser for
birthmark removal and similar things.
The Amiga's definitely an A2000, and
it's used in a clinic opposite Hornsby
Hospital.
For that little lot, Robert, you most
certainly get a free subscription!
G64 in Woman's Day
A few people, including Heath
Kirby Miller of Stuart Mill, Vic and
Paul Morablto of Cabramatta NSW,
spotted a prominent old model C64
and appropriately elderly monitor un-
der a story in the January 24th Wom-
an's Day on computer addiction in
children. Paul even ripped out the
page! The opinion around the office
is that they didn't show an Amiga to
prevent thousands more children
spendi ng their days gl ued to the screen
- and we're not quite sure what's
wrong with that, anyway - it's cer-
tainly how the editorial team got their
jobs!
AMIGA Review
^uCuftc 'WatcA
Commodore
Update
• Over 320,000 CD32s have
already been sold world wide
(And Atari is hoping to sell a
mere 50,000 Jaguars this
year!).
• There are now far more
CD32s than 3DOs (and it's
going to stay that way), and
will soon (if not already) pass
the Sega CD in sales.
• Commodore International
is shipping 40,000 Amiga
4000s a month worldwide.
• These days Commodore
ONLY makes AGA
machines: namely CD32,
Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000,
and soon the Amiga 4000
Tower.
• At the current rate
Commodore is selling
Amigas, they will ship two
million machines world wide
this fiscal year! This number
is more than they've ever
sold in one year - and all
AGA machines. In the
heyday of the Commodore
54, Commodore in Australia
shipped one million dollars'
worth of orders in one day!
• AGA games are starting to
come. Lots of big name
developers who dropped the
Amiga are now back. The list
of expected CD32 titles is
starting to grow very long,
although availability in
Australia is still lagging
behind.
• According to the Financial
Review, Commodore Busf
ness Machines (the Australian
company), recorded around
$40 million of revenue for its
Australia/New Zealand oper-
ation. □
AAA Moves Ahead -
New Amigas Expected
The first AAA computer to
roll out will sport a brand
new architecture. Several
CPU versions are likely - in-
cluding '040 and *060 ver-
sions (simply change CPU
modules). A RISC model in
early 1995 is expected which
will use HP's PA-RISC chip.
DSP (for 16-bit sound and
communication) will be on
the motherboard. Expansion
should allow for up to 16Mb
chip ram, and up to 128Mb
fast ram - with say 2Mb Chip
and 8Mb Fast as standard.
ALL memory will be 64 bits
wide. Fast ram may even be
128 bits wide, if it improves
performance significantly.
Tire expansion bus will
offer 64 bit PCI slots, four
Zorro III slots. A 3.6Mb
floppy drive and high speed
SCSI-II interface is likely too.
The V4.0 operating system
offer RTG (ReTargetable
Graphics), and networking
support.
The entry level model may
cost as low as US$ 1500. Vari-
ous configurations of ram and
hard drive will be available.
Various version of the AAA
chips, offering a range of
video resolutions and speed,
will be offered.
At the low end, we can ex-
pect similar video modes to
SVGA on the PCs. Although
using 32 bit DRAM memory,
the low end unit will be miss-
ing the Linda chip, but offer
better than 57Mb/sec band-
width - shared between video
and processors (so it will
slow down in hires/hicolour
modes). Expandeding to 64
bit ram will give you mid
range performance.
Resolutions: 640 x 480 x
16 bit (72Hz non-interlaced),
640 x 400 s 24 bit (60Hz
non-interlaced),, 1280 x 400
x 24 bit (60Hz interlaced),
800 x 600 x 8 bit (72Hz non-
interlaced), 1024 x 768 x 8
bit (60Hz non-interlaced),
1280 x 800 x 6 bit (60Hz
non-interlaced).
The mid range model with
64 bit DRAM memory, also
lacks the Linda chip, and will
shovel data round at better
than U4Mb/sec. Instead of
60Hz, the mid range will go
up to 72Hz for steadier video
displays, offer more colours
(16-bit in all modes) and
1280 x 1024 x 8 bit.
At the high end, you'll
have full 64 bit VRAM
memory and the Linda chip.
Data will move at lI4Mb/sec
bandwidth for blitter. CPU,
copper, and other DMA; or a
whopping 22 8 Mb/sec band-
width for video. There will be
no slow down at all in
hires/hicolour modes. Addi-
tional resolutions include
1280 x 800 x 24 bit (65Hz
non-interlaced); 1280 x 1024
x 16 bit (72Hz non-
interlaced) with room for 8 to
16MB of chip RAM, which
can be added in 1 or 2Mb in-
crements (for 8 or 16Mb).
Chip RAM can be a mix
of DRAM and VRAM. With
VRAM, there is no DMA
contention (remember how
hires gets REAL slow in 16
colours on ECS or 256
colours on AGA? Well no
more!). The blitter will be
just as fast at 1280 x 1024 as
it is at 320 x 200. DRAM of
course is cheaper. But you
could have, say, 4MB of
VRAM and 4MB of DRAM
and use the VRAM for the
screen and DRAM for images
for optimum cost and perfor-
mance.
AAA will boast a much
faster, 32 bit blitter. It can blit
24 bit images faster than
AGA, and it can blit 8 bit im-
ages! Tli is machine will be
considerably faster than any
Mac or IBM. There will be
support for quad-density flop-
py drives (3.6MB formatted
with FFS) and CD-ROM.
The two 32 bit chips are An-
drea (AKA Agnus/Alice) and
Mary (AKA Paula), Andrea is
a 32 bit blitter and copper,
with burst mode memory ac-
cess, 1 lOMhz display rate (4
xAGA).
Mary offers 8 channels of
16 bit CD quality audio, flop-
py and CD-ROM support.
The two 64 bit chips are
Linda and Monica (AKA
Denise/Lisa). Linda is a video
line buffer, controlled by An-
drea. Monica gives Chunky
and planar video modes (like
the PC), HAM/HAMS, true
colour, and a new com-
pressed video mode. There
will be two high speed
buffered serial ports - and if
you're still doubting all this
news, you'll be pleased to
know a prototype AAA based
Amiga is up and running
even NOW! □
AMIGA Review
'%W ^Mdetefo
^^^^^^^mm^mm^^mm
■znz
Pagesfream
3.0 Nearer
PageStream has won
numerous awards in Amiga
desktop publishing award.
However, here at Amiga
review we've always felt it
kind of lacked key features
needed for professional use.
When it conies to
PageStream 3.0, we have a
different opinion. On specifi-
cation alone, this product
looks set to be one of the
most significant productivity
titles to hit the streets this
year. Version 3.0 gives you
many times more power than
any previous version. In fact,
it's a whole new program.
There are over 1000 new
features in 3.0. PageStream
3.0 is claimed to be the
easiest desktop publisher for
beginners to learn because of
its Amiga-standard interface
and extensive online help.
Professionals will love
PageStream for its power and
flexibility. Precise
typographic controls,
advanced drawing features,
stunning color output and
recordable macros make
PageStream 3.0 the best
choice for your desktop
publishing needs.
Most of all, you will love
the fact you can import
Professional Page files
directly. PageStream 3.0 can
import and export text in
Amiga and PC word
processing formats, including
Final Copy and WordPerfect.
It has so many word
processing features that you
may never use a word
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Notice the floating toolbar strips - very much like
Pagemaker on the Apple Mac.
processor again. PageStream
comes with a fast spell
checker and can
automatically hyphenate your
text. No word processor can
match PageStream 's selection
of precise typographic
controls. Kerning, tracking,
leading, bulleted paragraphs,
widow and orphan control -
PageStream 3.0 has it all!
When?
As soon as possible.
Softlogic say they want 3.0 to
be the best it can be, and if it
takes a little longer to get it
done, so be it. They say
PageStream 3.0 will be
available in March 1994, We
don't think it could be any
later than April.
It's been a long time since
a new version of PageStream
was released, but this is the
'big one'. They started from
scratch this time, and threw
away the old source code.
This will make Pase Stream
easier to upgrade and
maintain in the future.
They pored over all the
letters we have received over
the years, and added as many
of the features requested as
possible.
It sounds like SoftLogic
really do care what you think,
and have designed this
program for us. If you want a
particular feature, write to
them. If you're upgrading
from ProPage and find
something confusing about
PageStream 2 or 3, let them
know and they'll ny to make
it easier in I he future.
PageStream 3.0 will
include PageLiner 2.0 (text
editor), BME 2,0 (picture
editor and auto tracer),
HotLinks 2.0 (data
exchange), Over 50 fonts plus
clip art, New manual and an
Online Help System. For
more information call Tups oft
on (02) 477 5353.
□
Affordable
Colour Primera
Sydney - Tupsoft, a
leading importer in Amiga
productivity titles have
announced they will be
distributing the Primera
thermal and die sublimation
printer.
The Primera has won
many accolades for the
brilliant photographic quality
prints it can achieve for
around $3000 - considerably
less than alternatives costing
close to $20,000!
A special driver for the
Amiga is now available, with
the main driver a mere 10K,
and a separate file offering
additional support for the
die-sub option - which costs
around $7 per page to output.
Lower quality thermal output
is available for under $2.
The price for thermal only
is a tad under $2500 inc tax,
with die sub around $3000
inc tax. The printer needs
film ribbon refills and special
paper.
For information call
Tupsoft on (02) 477 5353.
□
AMIGA Review
&■*%%&£ $ '■*. { <?. « . ■*, ■& ■* a, K ^ «. ». ; „ ,. ,, X.
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LOAD
HEWfrgB j
Dirwork 2.0
Announced
Disk and file management
is tricky business, especially
when it comes to choosing
the right program. Until now
the only commercial offer-
ings have been either hard to
get, or made hefty demands
on memory requirements.
However, Dirwork - a
popular shareware file
manager - is now a
commercial product, with all
sorts of hip new stuff added.
The program is now
downright ridiculously
configurable.
Flexible
You can have DirWork
open as an inch square
window on Workbench with
four buttons and no file
display, or you can have a
1280x512 screen open with a
couple of hundred buttons
and room for two fde lists
besides.
Keyboard shortcuts, differ-
ent fonts and colours for but-
tons, three button mouse
support, unlimited menus,
disk copy and install
functions including high
density drive support, system
information functions, a virus
checker, full ARexx support,
displaying of any picture
you've got a datatype for on
WB3 and, of course, lots
more.
DirWork can now be used
for just about anything -
examples included with the
advance press release include
front ends for Ay Department
Professional that talk to it via
ARexx, docks, simple file
manipulators and plenty of
other tilings.
Look out for a full com-
parison between DirWork,
Opus and the IBM directory
utilities coming soon!
24-Bit
Video Titles
Inno Vision Technology,
the people who brought us
Broadcast Tiller, have
launched a full 24 -bit video
titling and graphics package
for the Amiga. The software
supports AG A machines, as
well as various 24 -bit cards
including Opal Vision and
Impact Vision 24.
It is said Montage can
create razor shaip anti-aljased
titles with real time click and
drag font scaling. An array of
effects can be applied such as
embossing, gradient fills,
transparency and soft cast
shadows.
You can also create 24-bit
backgrounds with gradient
spreads, translucency blend-
ing, beveled boxes, wallpaper
and tile effects.
Montage supports import
and export of 24-bit IFF and
Super Hires HAM-8 images.
For final output, Montage
supports various transitions
and wipes between screens -
particularly when used on an
AG A machine.
Eight typefaces are
included, with an additional
10 available. An optional
postscript module, available
in one month, allows Adobe
Type 1 and 3 fonts to be used
as well as the popular
Compugraphic fonts (stan-
dard with Workbench 2.x or
higher).
All fonts have ultra-
high-level anti-aliasing for an
effective resolution of 1
nanosecond regardless of
size.
For more information
contact Tupsoft on (02) 477
5353. RRP is $499 and the
extra fonts are $245. A price
on the Postscript option will
be announced soon.
□
AMIGA Review
Software Review
45 Degree Rotation
Antique
Black and white
ge p messing
y y*d%
Mirror
In?***— 5 F/II
According to Jarrod Pudsey, Image F/X 1.5 is set to
become the defacto standard for image processing
on the Amiga
Halftone
Version 1.50 of GVP's
ImageFX is now available. It
is packed with many new fea-
tures and improvements. Being a com-
plete image processing solution, it is
quickly becoming a popular choice
for graphics users.
In the US ImageFX is now accepted
as the standard image processing pack-
age and has been used by companies
Flip
Explode
More Distortion
10
AMIGA Review
Software Review
Black Hole
such as Warner Bros, to create their
animated series, Animamacs,
Whether your interest in the Amiga
is animation, painting, DTP, video or
photography, ImageFX is designed to
supplement your needs.
What is image
processing?
Anything involving the manipula-
tion of an image on the Amiga can be
classed as image processing, from
changing the file format to perform-
ing gamma correction and much more.
An image processing software pack-
age is essentially the hub for all graph-
ics work.
Using ImageFX allows you to load
in an image from a wide variety of
file formats, perform colour altera-
tions, adjustments and effects, paint,
cut & paste, scale, composite images,
capture images from framegrabber
devices or scanners, save in as many
file and image formats or send the
image to print. Using the included
Blur
Cinemorph software it is even possi-
ble to morph single or multiple im-
ages together.
Up and running
ImageFX comes on four disks and
requires at least 2-3 megs of RAM,
depending on the size of images be-
ing displayed. It will work on a 1.3
system and can even be booted from
disk, however a hard drive is recom-
mended as this tends to be a little
slow.
Once up and running, the layout
consists of a menu panel across the
base of the screen. There are five ac-
tion gadgets controlling the different
areas of the program, each using its
own menu. A status indicator simu-
lates the progress of a function in a
graph-like scale and functions can be
cancelled while still in progress.
Throughout the program the right
mouse button is used to remove and
replace the menu panel for full screen
views.
Chisel
Clear Bumps
Clear Rough
Distortion
Dispersion
Mirror Again
AMIGA Review
Software Review
Fact Box
Image F/X 1.5
from Peripheral World (03) 725 3233
RRP $449
Requires 3Mb RAM
Acceierator/WB2,x/Hard Drive
Recommended
The remainder of ImageFX's lay-
out contains the image buffers where
pictures are loaded and displayed.
There is a main buffeT consisting of
three layers (two image buffers and
one alpha buffer) and images loaded
into this buffer are converted to 24-bit
(8-bit for greyscale images) to pro-
vide high quality processing. The two
image buffers are the same, acting as
one main and one spare, and can be
swapped with each other.
The alpha buffer is a 256 level grey
channel for creating effects to one or
both images in the buffers. For exam-
ple, when compositing the two image
buffers, black areas of the alpha buffer
will maintain the main image while
white areas will display the spare or
swap image. Portions containing a
medium value of black to white will
result in a 50% composition of both
images.
True colour (24-bit) image data is
stored in RAM so the image is dis-
played through a preview buffer. This
can be an Amiga display or 3rd party
device. The Preview is designed as a
fast feedback working environment of
the true colour image. When an im-
age is processed it can then be saved
as 24-bit, To convert to less than 24-
bit or to view in a different format
without changing the preview mode,
the image can be rendered to the
Render buffer and saved as rendered
image data.
Features and functions
With the number of functions avail-
able in ImageFX, most too numerous
to mention let alone explain, a sum-
mary list has been added to the re-
view as well as images depicting vari-
ous image effects. Below are some of
the features available.
ImageFX is completely user
configurable allowing customizable
menus and hotkeys. Macros enable a
process or series of processes to be
recorded and repeated as many times
as neccessary. A command shell in-
terface is available at the press of a
key to allow manual entry to all of
ImageFX's functions, ARexx is also
able to access all of the functions avail-
able in the program. ARexx is popu-
lar for animation as frames created by
the computer can be loaded into
ImageFX, processed and saved auto-
matically using an ARexx script.
A preference screen enables con-
figuration of the program. Options for
the Preview select this buffer to dis-
play from Amiga hardware (AGA on
Oil Painting
the A1200/A4000) with controls for
dithering, or from the third party de-
vices DCTV, Firecracker24, HAME,
1V24 and Opal vision. There is even a
SuperAmiga mode which uses any
screen mode in the Amiga monitors
directory.
ImageFX supports the Sharp JX100
and Epson scanners, along with
Framegrabber, Vlab, IV24, and the
PP&S framegrabber.
Rendering is possible io all the de-
vices supporting the preview display.
Included is the ability to use such de-
vices as Retina, EGS Spectrum, For-
eign (for use on platforms other than
Amiga) and SAGE compatible boards
like Resolver. In addition, DCTV and
HAME do not require the hardware to
operate and the images can be saved
for display on these devices.
Printing can be done to any printer
supported by the Amiga preferences.
Postscript printing is also possible as
well as the ability to to export post-
script (PS or EPS) files to use in desk-
top publishing programs.
An important feature of ImageFX
is the ability to create a space on the
hard drive for use as Virtual Memory.
The Main Toolbox
The Toolbox is the main menu
panel and where all the action takes
place. AH of the main image modifi-
cation and analyzation is done through
this menu. Along the top of the panel
are all the utilities of a paint program
such as line, fill and geometric tools,
spray paint and cut & paste.
Region limits areas of an image to
be processed. Balance uses sliders to
alter the colour levels. Composite
gives control to the varying ways the
swap buffer and main buffer images
are combined to form one image. Size
allows an image to be scaled in over-
all dimensions, cropped to remove
edges or set the aspect of horizontal
or vertical pixels.
Measurements can be in pixels or
numerical values and halving or dou-
bling buttons enable quick and easy
operation. Color provides a selection
of colour effects or a custom menu
where a curved graph can be altered
to remap the image's colour to the
curve. Predefined remap curves can
also be loaded. Convolve creates im-
age distortions by replacing pixels with
averages of their surrounding colours.
Likewise, custom convolutions can be
performed or loaded and saved
Filter is useful for video applica-
tions as it can reduce the amount of
colour bleeding and illegal colours by
using dynamic ranges or RGB colour
limits. Finally Hook brings up a re-
quester to load programs and modules
Comparison
Look for our head-to-head
comparison with the new Art
Department Professional 2.5, coming
soon.
12
AMIGA Review
Software Review
accompanying ImageFK. Additional
processing hooks are blackout (re-
moves black component of images for
printers using separate colour and
black ribbons) and spiral (warp image
in a circular motion).
Programs included are ImageFX
Multiple image Processor (IMP), ca-
pable of processing entire ranges of
frames, and Cinemorph, which pro-
duces image morphing using a mesh
technique to aiter entire grids of pixels
instead of the usual point morphing.
The result is faster morphing with less
distortion to untouched areas of the
image.
New features
Most of the new features in the
upgrade are improvements over older
versions and provide improved ease
of use. Several new features do ap-
pear however, such as a definable
muki level undo, seven drawing pal-
ettes and a render palette instead of
one of each, pressure sensitive tablet
support, new display driver options,
prefsll printing for improved colour
24-bit printing (claimed by GVP to be
the best quality printing available for
the Amiga), new loaders and savers, a
new 256 level Quantize for reducing
24-bit palettes, and all new drawing
tools and modes to improve overall
speed and operation. A summary of
the features appears at the end of this
review.
Verdict
If it's image processing you're look-
ing for on the cheap with standard
results then there are programs like
Personal Paint, but be prepared to
wait for your image because these pro-
grams can be slow. ImageFX on the
other hand is fast, easy and efficient.
This quality does come at a price
but compared to similar packages
you're paying no extra once you pur-
chase the add on extras like the hard-
ware drivers, multiple image handlers
and image painting software. ImageFX
provides features galore in a complete
processing solution. □
image HX features
Scanners/framegrabhers
Epson, Sharp:JX100;-Viab," ; -'
FramegrabberjlVFG . . .
Printers
' Pre'fe're'nces,' : Postscript,' Frets. II
Size;;;:
Scale Smooth/Fast/Bordef;;crop,i Set. ;
aspect. '■ ':. : ''' : ''^J":.:.':':." : ::-.;;;;: ":.:::- : -":';^-:-"r;:. :.:.
'Color- • -
Custom, Negative,- Solarize. Posterize,-
.False Color, -Grey -to Color,- Color; to ■'■"■'■
Preview devices
■ Grey, .B&W to Grey -Halftone-
Amiga, Amiga : AGA,DCTV, FC24, .
. ; Name, IV24, : Opalvisiorij SuperAmiga
Convolve
[; /■ .. .;;■;.. ; .; ■ ■ ■■'■■■■■■■■■■ ■ : '- '
Custom, Sharpen, Unsharp mask, Blur, -
Render devices
Motion, blur,: Relief map. Edge detect:
.;■ Amiga;! 13, Amiga/AGA; DCTV, EGS, : .
'":..".:.- ;--■ '.'.'. . '■■■ ' '■;;;.
FC24, Foreign.Hame, IV24, Retina,
Transform jjgjl
: : SAGE; Opalvisio'n . ■■ ■
. Flip Horizontal/Vertical,
■ Mirror-. Horizontal/Vertical.: Roil
Loaders!
'-'- :■■■'■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■'::::;...; : .:■'■'::..■ ■ ■::.. . :■■■;:■■;[
'■■Alias PtXrAmiga icortrAnim',' BMP, ■ ■
: - Filter
DCTV/Clip, DP HE, FLI/FLC, GIF,
■Dynamic range, RGB Colour limit.
; Hame/Clip.1LBM;lMG8, Impulse 12/ ..
Antialias.'R.LP.-- ■
■■■ 24-bit, JPEG, Macpaint, Multi-FAXX, .
.-' -PCX, PGM Binary/Text,- ■ PPM : Binary/
Effect . .
;,-. Text; ;QRT/DKB/POV, : -Rendition 1/2, ,
: Remove. feature, Oil Transfer, .■
r '.Sculpt Grey/RGB, Single-FAXXv
Disperse, Roughen, Distort, Wave ;.:■ .: i
Targa, Tiff Intel/Motorola; AWIEM,
Distort
: - : Windows 3.0 icon, YUVN
Draw Modes
-Savers
Matte, Lighten,; Darken, Color,
Alias/BMP, Clipboard, ILBM, JPEG,
Gradient, Colorize'; Hue, Saturation,
PBM, PCX, QRT/DKB/POV,
Value; Blur, ■ Ru b through', trace ".;
Rendition, Scutpt.Targa, Tiff, VMEM .
through; Add, Pantograph, Felt tip; :
. : : Sharpen. Trail
Palette
: RGB, HSV, CMY, YIQ, YUV
Edge
Normal, Antialias. Feather in,- Feather 7
TOOLBOX
out
; Region
Hook
-. Full. Box, poly,;free, Flood, Brush -.'
Antique, Balance;: Blackhoie. Blackout,
: ' Cinemorph,; Deinterlace, Explode, ■
Balance
GrabFC, Hist, ImageFX 'Multiple; image.:;'
RGBV, HSV, CMYK, Color,, Gamma
. Processing.lnterlace, :Measure,.P!,:- .";•;
■■-'. ' '■■ : ' ■ -
Pixeiise, Rampedge, Spiral, Variance
Composite
;: Transparency Include/Exclude/
Quantize
. ■ Closeness, Merge,-Matte, Add, :
' MedtanCut64, Enhanced64, Tibbet256 '■'•:•
...Subtract, Imagemap, Alpha Frisket/
;; Texture
Other program functions;
Aspect; lock.: Disable verity, Disable
Rotate
. undo,: Coordinates and Metric. ■
:;:;Any-angle,+ : -90', 180.;:.- ;;
:.,:.,,..,. ,.■;,..;,;;;;.;,:: ,: : : ' , ;:; ;■:;
AMIGA Review
13
Hardware Review
Rocket Power
for your Al 200
There's a certain hoonish appeal
to putting huge power into
small machines. How else can
you explain VW Beetles with the back
seat removed in order to fit a nine
litre V12 engine?
The less expensive and offensive
variant in the Amiga world is taking a
small Amiga - originally the A500
but now the A 1200 - and giving it far
more processing power than anybody
could reasonably expect to find in such
a small package.
I'm typing this article on a worked
68030 powered A500, and I'm proud
to report that the tradition of souping
up baby Amigas continues, with
GVP's release of the A1230+ A1200
expansion, which gives the little 1200
literally twice the power of the old
flagship, the A3000.
Turbocharging A500s is hard to jus-
tify for any purpose beyond the
abovementioned Cooper S Mini phi-
losophy, but a fast 1200 is a rather
neater machine for portable use. It's
got an RF modulator and colour com-
posite video out built in, so you can
use it as an easily moved demo ma-
chine that can plug into just about any
video output device.
The problem has been finding pow-
erful but reasonably priced expansions.
GVP have now got a serious contender.
The next wave
GVP have produced A 1200 expan-
sions before, the original A 1230 Turbo
and their SCSI-RAM board. The old
by Daniel Rutter
1230 featured a 40MHz 68EC030
processor and optional maths
coprocessor, the same as the earlier
A530 side box for the A500. Fast this
board certainly was, but it was the
only GVP accelerator board for ages
to lack a SCSI hard drive controller
and hence didn't sell terribly well.
The A 1200 has a hard drive con-
troller built in; it can actually take up
to two 2.5" IDE hard drives inside
with a little tweaking. If you want to
connect any of the groovier expan-
sion stuff - Syquest or Bernoulli re-
movable cartridge drives, tape back-
ups, monster scanners - you need SCSI,
and the A1230 didn't have it.
Fact Box
GVP A 1230+ and SCSI Adaptor
Distributed by Peripheral World
(03) 725 3233
Australian street price: from $849
So GVP released their SCSI-RAM
board, which had the hard drive con-
troller, room for RAM and a
coprocessor socket but no accelera-
tor. Once again, close but no cigar;
the A1200's 14MHz 68EC020 proc-
essor is quite fast, particularly with
the double speed boost that fast RAM
gives it, but still not swift enough for
heavy duty applications like render-
ing and desktop publishing.
A1291/A30Q0 File Performance Results
A 1291
A3000
Create
Open
Dir Scan Delete
14
AMIGA Review
Hardware Review
Now you can get RAM, 030, SCSI,
battery backed clock and coprocessor
all at once, in a rather more elegant
package - the new A 1230 Turbo Plus.
What do you need?
The problem with making an all-in-
one package like this is that many users
genuinely don't need SCSI. GVP have
got around this by using the Al 291, a
$200 daughterboard that plugs into the
main trapdoor expansion. If you don't
need SCSI, don't buy it.
Likewise, the 68882 maths
coprocessor is optional. Just as well,
since the 40MHz version will set you
back $350 and the 50MHz $400, and
they're only useful if your applica-
tions actually support them. For ren-
dering a coprocessor's great, for
spreadsheets it can be useful, for word
processing it's as functional as a
bullbar on a tank.
A 1291/A3000 SCSI Speed Results
s**as
I.Se*83
^
l.£t*&5
vm A1291+
1 . ■S#*i35
■ A3000
B
t
■
c
te*(S5
■2*+ 84
512 -953 (7S4 33S6. £2B2 I TS*+&4 2.2**fl4 4. 1 t&e+*l4?
Buffer Size
70S&+Q4
Okay, Okay,
So It's A Digital Time Base
Corrector,
But can It...?
The Plus Means Yesi
Following GVP's philosophy of complete feature integration
pioneered by our G-Force Combo"' accelerators |used in a majority
of Amiga® Video Toaster™ Work-
_ stations], we are proud to present a
li professional TBC with time and money
saving features.
You would demand a TBC to be
100% digital, have 4:2:2 throughput, and an integrated ProcAmp. You
would want it to be under $1,000, We agree. What does the Plus get you?
fCsiu& - Real-time 16,7 Million Color Frame-Grabbet/FiameBuffer for use
as a digital video stillstore or signal generator. Included ImageFX™ modules
allow direct editing and manipulation in the framebuffer,
Y~JLuA - Full Transcoding between Composite and Y/C (SVHS| Input and
Composite and Y/C |SVHS| Output.
f-?iu6 - Real-Time Professional Special Effects Generator featuring
sokrization, strobing, pseudo-color, monochrome effects, and more,
jOtut, - NTSC/PAL/SECAM Signal Standards Conversion to NTSC/PAL for
integration into worldwide video environments automatically.
jiJUiA - Complete Amiga Software Control and ARexx™ Interface that
allows seamless integration of all TBC Plus features into an exisiting
automated video studio installation.
JLJLuA - Full Processing Amplifier [PiocAmpI Control for correcting
or adjusting incoming video "on-the-fly" quickly and professionally.
J~-Jlu4> - 3 inputs (2-composite, 1-Y/C] that can be connected
simultaneously and "Hot-Switched' with software without having
to play with cable connections.
TLama - Convert the 2-composite inputs into a single Y/C input,
providing two switchable Y/C inputs.
JCJLa6 - Full SMTTE/EBU encodmg/decodifig/stiiping available as an option
/■~s£ud - VyUAc£\, f Vt\UC&\, tn0fa&[
A his is simply the most powerful and flexible video
stabilization device for the Amiga computer. The TBCPIas mates
an excellent complement to any GVP IV24
or Centaur OpalVhion™
offers more!"
=GVP
NewTek Video Toaster
Graphics System. The Plas means it also
Gary Gzhmtm, President Magic BuEet Comni\inicatkms. Inc.
Distributed in Australia by .
Peripheral U£ m
■ THE Plus, C-ffflce Gumbo-, ImagefX and W24 are HadSfWta j' G
World
506 Dorset Road, Croydon, Victoria 3136, Australia,
Phone: 03 725 3233 Fax 03 725 6765
Valley Products Ing, Amiga Is a naglslsred Irademaifc of CDinmoifcre ftmigi. inc., All other trademarks are IHK property 01 1Nlr respective WrtlBrs. ^m^^^^^^^^
AMIGA Review
15
Hardware Review
•
The A1230 we tested had the full
50MHz 68030 and 4Mb of RAM. The
advantage of the non-EC chip is that
the higher clock speed makes it 25%
faster (50MHz is the speediest 030
you can get), and it's got a memory
management unit. This lets you run
programs like Enforcer (if you don't
know what this is, you don't need it)
and virtual memory applications like
GigaMem and HDMem, which let you
use hard disk space as imitation RAM
for access to hundreds of megabytes
of apparent RAM. The tradeoff is that
virtual RAM is much slower than regu-
lar storage.
On the subject of RAM, you can
get the A1230 with as little as 2Mb of
RAM installed. Don't. If you've only
got 2Mb of fast RAM and you use it
all - not a very difficult feat, with a
hard disk cache or two and a few resi-
dent programs on top of a normal
multitasking load - your system will
FOR BEGINNERS
What's an
accelerator?
It's a plug-in for your computer that
completely replaces your existing proc-
essor (the CPU -your Amiga's engine
if you like), making the machine faster.
It doesn't matter what processor you
had to start with - identical accelera-
tors will give identical results.
If you start with an Amiga 2000, for
instance, and put a 68030 accelerator
in it to replace its existing 68000, you'll
get exactly the same processor speed
as an Amiga 1200 with an identical
68030. it doesn't matter that the 1 200
started out with a 68020; the accel-
erator bypasses the existing proces-
sor,
Of course, this does mean that the
1200 owner paid for a 68020 proces-
sor instead of the much cheaper 68000
and then didn't use it, but this is com-
pensated by the fact that the 1 200 is a
newer and better built machine which
does graphic operations - which are
not closely related to processor speed
- twice as fast as the 2000.
i_^^
GVP's A1230 accelerator
suddenly take a leisurely holiday in
the Land of the Cabbage, running con-
siderably slower than your original
020. This is because fast processors in
the Amiga architecture must have ac-
cess to fast RAM, or the bigger the
processor, the slower it runs. Sounds
weird, but that's the way it works.
So 4Mb is essential, or more if you
run lots of programs at once or handle
monster files. The 1230 can actually
fit up to 32Mb of RAM, but this will
cost you very large dollars and is far
more storage than most people need.
The board has two SIMM memory
sockets, and can take 1Mb, 4Mb and
16Mb SIMMs in any combination.
This means you can configure the
board with one, two, four, five, eight,
16, 17, 20 or 32Mb of RAM, although
as I said above the first two options
are largely useless.
The need for speed
Now to the juicy bit - the speed
tests. The standard high powered
Amiga for the last few years has been
the A3000, powered by a 25MHz
68030 with coprocessor clocked at the
same rate and using the old ECS chip
set. The A1230 with coprocessor is,
in every processing department, twice
as fast as the once-mighty 3000. Re-
member that the machine we're talk-
ing about here is smaller than an
Amiga 500 and can have a couple of
hundred megabytes of hard disk stor-
age inside it.
The A1291 SCSI controller card is
nothing special. It's the standard GVP
Series II SCSI interface, as used on
every other recent GVP controller and
with precisely the same performance.
When I tested it against the SCSI speed
of a stock A30O0 s internal SCSI in-
terface, the GVP board won by a very
narrow margin, as you can see in the
accompanying graphs.
Regular readers will remember that
the chequerboard patterns on the bar
graph for file manipulation speeds
mean both machines scored the same;
there's really nothing much between
them. The test drive was a late model
88/44Mb external Sy quest, using a
44Mb cartridge, and it had 100 regu-
lar buffers and no intelligent caching.
The 1230/1291 combo would have
pulled ahead further with a cache run-
ning, thanks to its extra processor
power.
The 1291 is only a SCSI-1 control-
ler, which 1 means you can't plug in
more than seven external devices (not
too constricting) and you can't use
SCSI-2 devices at their full speeds.
SCSI-2 devices work just fine with it,
though, and are still generally quicker
than SCSI-1 equivalents because
16
AMIGA Review
Hardware Review
Wrap-up
The big advantage of a worked
A1200 over the more expandable 4000
is its compact size. If you don't want
another box in the house, or you need
a portable machine that you can take
anywhere and plug into a TV for spec-
tacular SCALA presentations, show-
ing off your rendering talents to po-
tential clients or simply giving you
high powered Amiga computing in
whatever hotel you happen to inhabit
tonight, this is the machine for you.
It's not cheap, but neither is it ri-
diculously expensive. The new GVP
expansions aren't for everyone, but
they've definitely got a place in some
people's 1200s. □
The SCSI extender
they're generally later models.
The SCSI controller IS respectably
quicker than the internal A1200 hard
drive, but I couldn't do a meaningful
test because it was of course impossi-
ble to test both controllers with the
same drive.
If you get a 1231 with no SCSI
controller, using a disk cache like
HyperCache on the internal A1200
drive would be an economical alter-
native. Caches work most dramatically
on machines with slow drives and fast
processors, which is certainly what
you've got.
GVP mention that the socket that
the A1291 plugs into can take other,
exciting expansion devices too. Yeah,
sure. They said the same thing about
the expansion slot in the A530, which
can take an 80286 PC emulator card
and that's it. I'll be surprised if any-
thing very new comes out for the 1230,
although a SCSI-2 interface isn't out
of the question.
Value for money?
The biggest consideration about
these large A1200 expansions is
whether they're really a good deal.
After all, an A4000/030 gives a lot
more room for extra internal expan-
sion, so you save on external boxes.
How do the prices stack up?
Well, the A1230 in 40MHz EC030
trim with 2Mb costs $849. With 4Mb
- the cheapest useful config - it's
$1049. The 50MHz version costs $350
extra. If you want 8Mb of RAM it's
$399 more. The A1291 costs $199,
and the coprocessors $349 for 40MHz
and $399 for 50MHz.
Ignoring the price of a monitor, a
4000/030 costs about $2700. It has a
25MHz 68EC030, a 120Mb IDE hard
drive and 4Mb of RAM. So to get a
1200 with the same power (a bit more,
actually), you're looking at maximum
prices of $1000 for the basic machine,
$450 to swap the drive for a 120Mb,
and $849 for the basic A1230. This is
about $2300, and gives you a ma-
chine that's 60% faster for 15% less.
Let's say you go for broke. A 1200
with the 50MHz full 030, 8Mb of fast
Ram for a 10Mb total and a 68882
coprocessor, along with the SCSI
board, costs about $3,200. As shown
above, this gives you a machine with
twice the speed of a 3000 and twice
the speed of a 4000/030 on everything
except graphics. You've got AGA
graphics, just like the 4000/030, and
a 40Mb internal drive for you to boot
from. Stick your application software
on an external SCSI drive for speed
and you're in business, with the most
computing power per cubic centime-
tre outside the Batcave.
What are all these
processor numbers?
The 68000 is the basic tow power
processor, now only available in the baby
Amiga 600. It dates hack about 1 5 years.
The 6B020 is the processor used by the
old A2500 and new A1200, and gives
around five limes the performance. The
S8030 is used by the A4000/030 and
older A3000, and goes at about ten times
68000 speed. And the 68040, only used
by the A4000/040, burns along at some-
thing in the vicinity of 40 times the 68000.
' The reason these figures are rough
is that processor speed is determined
first by its type * 020, 030 or whatever -
and second by its clock speed, ex-
pressed in megahertz (MHz), or millions
of cycles per second. The standard
68000 Amigas run at 7MHz. The A1 200
runs at 1 4MHz. The 4000/030 and A3000
run at 25MHz. The 4000/040 runs at
25MHz. And accelerators go right up to
50MHz; for some tasks, a 50MHz 030
beats a 33MHz 040, but don't think that
makes it better.
020, 030 and 040 accelerators are
available for the Amiga 2000. You can
get 020 and 030 accelerators for the
A500, and can shoehorn in an 040 if you
happen to be stark raving mad. The
A3000 can take 040 accelerators, and
faster boards for the A4000 models are
in the works. The new 68060 chip prom-
ises more than twice the speed of the
040.
m
AMIGA Review
17
Hardware Review
Vidi Amiga
1 2 & 24 RT
It's now affordable to
capture high quality
video images on any
Amiga. Daniel Butter
checks out the latest
solution from Rombo.
The Vidi Amiga 12, reviewed in
Amiga Review back in August
1993, brought colour video
digitising to the masses for less than
$300. Amigas have been able to digi-
tise and manipulate video from cam-
eras and VCRs for ages. However un-
til now you could have any two of
either cheap, fast or good quality - but
not all three!
The new Real Time (RT) VIDI
digitisers cost more, but for a reason.
Real Time is a confusing term - after
all, when was the last time you saw
something happen in fake time? In
this case, Real Time simply means
with no delay - as soon as you click
on the Grab button, your image is
stored in the Vidi box.
To do this, the framegrabber must
be able to capture a single video frame.
Video runs at 25 frames per second,
so this is quite a tricky thing.
On the older VIDIs, your picture
would get badly messed up if there
was any movement in the input video
during the first stage of the grab, which
could take a second or so. There was
no way you could digitise from mov-
ing pictures, unless you worked in very
Fact Box
Vidi Amiga 12 RT $449
Vidi Amiga 24 RT $749
Available from
Amadeus Computers
(02)652 2712
Comprepair (03) 326 0133
low resolution. Getting a good quality
shot of anything that wasn't sitting
very still was impossible.
You could get around that by re-
cording whatever you wanted to digi-
tise and grabbing it from your VCR's
freeze frame, but if your VCR or cam-
era didn't have a rock solid pause,
like you get from four head VCRs and
cameras with digital still, then your
images were still screwed up.
Output from the Vidi Amiga 12 RT ... and 24 RT
18
AMIGA Review
Put Your Finger on the Buttons of the
Ultimate Amiga Word Processor
Final Writer"
S
A!
B
_P
f/^/jv^
From the publisher of the acclaimed Final Copy 11
comes its new companion. Final Writer - for the
author who needs even more! If you already use an
Amiga Word Processor, it won't include the complete
and comprehensive array of features found in this latest
addition to the SoftWood family.
Can your Word Processor...
Output crisp PostScript™ font outlines on any graphic
printer (not just expensive lasers), and was it
supplied with over 1 10 typefaces'! Import, scale, crop,
view on screen and output structured EPS clip-art
images (Final Writer is supplied with a hundred), again, on any printer".' Also create
structured graphics and rotate them along with i«i to any angle, giving you DTP quali-
ty presentation? Provide a huge range of printing options (eg. thumbnails, scaling, crop
marts etc. on PostScript™ printers) and fulfil other advanced Word Processing func-
tions easily such as automatic indexing, tabic of contents, table of illustrations and
bibliography generation'' With Final Writer, this is now available to you along with a
list of features that just goes on and on. We know
that you'll be impressed by this revolution in Amiga
Word Processing, but don't be put off by it's
advanced capabilities. With its complement of user
definable Command Buttons and Superb Manual,
Final Writer is simply one of the easiest programs to
learn and use.
Final Writer is not just a one-off product...
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77ie software is the same for both the 12 RT and 24 RT
What's new?
All This Has Changed with the in-
troduction of the Vidi Amiga 12RT
and more powerful Vidi Amiga 24RT.
The real time option now means that
they genuinely work like a slow frame
grabber card, without needing to take
up an expansion slot - they plug into
the parallel port - or put a giant hole
in your bank balance.
What's a frame grabber? It's a hard-
ware device for people heavily into
video digitising which takes a frame
or frames out of incoming video and,
typically, stores it as 24 bit data in its
own memory. The 24 bit data gives
16,777,216 colours, the most you'll
see in any digitised image and enough
for photorealistic pictures.
To view this data, you can either
hook up an external monitor to the
video card, get the card to talk to a 24 '
bit card in your computer, which it's
often a part of, or render the image
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20
AMIGA Review
Hardware Review
with fewer colours so that your sys-
tem can display it without extra hard-
ware.
A lot of the heavy duty image ma-
nipulation is done by the hardware on
the frame grabber, which is why
they're so expensive, but fast.
What's missing?
The VIDI Amiga units have a lot
less processing power than a profes-
sional frame grabber. Afl they do is
grab red, green and blue components
of the incoming video and leave ren-
dering images up to the computer it-
self. The result is digitised images that
look as good as those you get from far
more expensive hardware, but which
take longer to grab.
The two versions of the Vidi RT
cost $749 for the 24 and $449 for the
12, including mains adaptor (beware
dealers who sell you the box with noth-
ing to power it!).
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AMIGA Review
21
Hardware Review
The Carousel screen
The difference is that the 24RT can
grab high resolution images - the 12RT
is limited to low res. Both can do
interlaced pictures, though, and on an
ECS machine that can't do high-col-
our high resolution modes like HAM-
8 and 256 colour, low res interlace
HAM is as good as you'll get.
Making animations
The other major application for the
Vidi digitisers is making animations.
You can do automatic multiple grabs
until your memory's full, and if you've
got a machine with a few megabytes
of RAM (the 24RT requires at least
2Mb, the 12RT can get along with
one) you can grab quite long se-
quences, provided you resist the urge
to put them all in high res HAM-8.
If you use, say, 16 colour grey scale,
you can grab images quite quickly.
You'll never make a live action movie
- the grab process is too slow - but for
time lapse photography or stop mo-
tion animation the Vidi package is
quite good.
You can set the time lapse feature
to work from external triggering -
pressing the button of a joystick in
port 2 will grab a frame. If you wire
your own cable for this, you can hook
the trigger to almost anything and grab
pictures of unsuspecting wildlife, bur-
glars, Royal lovers or whatever with-
out any human intervention at all.
You put the animation frames to-
gether on the Carousel screen, which
lets you arrange, modify and delete
frames, select the range you want to
play and save any given frame or range
of frames as regular pictures or as an
IFF animation file that can be loaded
by any other animation package. You
can load previously grabbed or other
pictures as part of your animation.
The software's the same for both
digitisers, and anyone who's used the
old Vidi software will be immediately
at home. The interface is functionally
identical, and just as clumsy - the in-
terconnection of the grabber panel,
the mixer to change image formats
and the carousel to set up animations
could be a lot better.
Once you get used to it, though,
using the software's quite fluid; the
major problem remains the intermina-
ble length of time it takes to mix and
display images on even quite quick
Amigas.
If you're using a 68000 based ma-
chine and decide to render a laced
hold and modify picture, you'll have
to line up the completion indicator
with a pole to see if it moves. Ditto
for A1200 owners going for high reso-
lution laced HAM-8 images; the re-
sults are stunning, but the wait's quite
a while.
You can save your images as 24 bit
IFFs for the best possible reproduc-
tion, but only people with big graph-
ics boards will then be able to view
them. They're good, though, if you
want to do more powerful manipula-
tion of the image with a program like
Art Department or ImageFX.
Special effects
On the subject of image manipula-
tion, quite a few special effects are
built in. Averaging, blurring, bright-
ness, contrast and colour balance ad-
justment, convolve (a powerful multi-
purpose effect), edge detection, em-
bossing, dynamic range extension,
flipping, gamma correction, negative,
pixelisation, sharpening, cutting, past-
ing and more are available, and all are
undo able.
For professional use the Vidi ef-
fects aren't much cop - if you're seri-
ous, use ADPro or ImageFX - but for
home applications they're brilliant fun.
The ability to use them on any picture
you choose to load gives whole new
possibilities for the package.
. The Vidi RT's manual is not great.
It's got a few cross-references that
don't match the pages, it's cheaply
printed and not very efficiently ar-
ranged. It tells you what you need to
know, but not without a bit of effort.
So, overall, the new Vidi Amiga
RT is the rather niftier upmarket
cousin of the old version, with supe-
rior grabbing speed but much the same
software and the same unavoidable
problems with slow image generation.
If you're not in a tearing hurry - a
minute seems an age when you're star-
ing at a screen - and you want a high
quality video digitiser that's well un-
der a thousand bucks instead of well
over, then the Vidi Amiga RT models
are for you. The 12RT costs enough
less than the 24RT to make it a better
option for ECS machine owners, while
the 24RT is the perfect companion for
a 1200 or 4000. □
22
AMIGA Review
Desktop Video
Clean up your Video
GVP's TBC Plus
Peter J. Ward reviews a new
plu gdn time base corrector board
Many novice videographers
who have tried their hand
at a wedding video, school
sports carnival or even a training video
for work may have noticed their video
footage mutating from quite viewable
on the original camera tape to a fuzzy,
colour bleeding mess on the VHS dis-
tribution copy. By the time it has been
edited, had some background mood
music added, and even perhaps a few
titles added by your trusty Amiga and
a genlock, the video masterpiece you
had hoped for is no more.
There are many things you can do
to improve this situation. For exam-
ple, use a Hi-8mm or S-VHS tape and
shoot in plenty of light. Similarly, all
editing should be done on Hi-Band
equipment.
However, the sad reality still re-
mains. As a videotape is played, re-
corded, played and recorded again tiny
timing errors in the video signal are
generated by slight slippage and
stretching of the tape. As each gen-
eration is recorded, the errors are am-
plified, and by about the third genera-
tion all is not well with your hard won
images.
Enter the Time Base Corrector.
These marvellous devices effectively
remove all the unwanted jitter and
slippage from a video tape signal by
reading an incoming video field, and
playing it back at a properly metered
rate with all timing errors removed.
Video professionals have used these
devices for decades, and not surpris-
ingly, associated prices for these black
boxes have been in the tens of thou-
sands of dollars.
The TBC Plus
GVP have recently introduced the
TBC Plus, a fully featured time base
corrector that costs about the same as
a PC. Though not unique among
TBC's now available for the Amiga,
the TBC Plus does represent the latest
generation of plug in TBC boards.
The TBC Plus is supplied with two
3.5 inch floppies with self installing
software. Just a few mouse clicks is
all you need to have the software func-
tional on your hard disk. The TBC
Plus board requires Kickstart 2 or later
and resides in either a Zorro II or III
expansion slot. The manual consists
of approximately 160 spiral bound
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AM/GA Review
23
Desktop Video
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Fine tuning
pages, and includes a tutorial and ref-
erence section.
The manual explains all of the func-
tional aspects of the TBC-Plus, and
includes many Arexx script examples
for each element. It also has an index,
which though not extensive is func-
tional enough.
The name "TBC-Plus" is no mar-
keting gimmick. This board represents
a significant step forward in Amiga
TBC hardware. Apart from a time base
correcting function, you can also
transcode Y/C and composite video
signals, perform standards conversion
between PAL, NTSC and SECAM
video standards, grab 24 bit still frames
from live video, perform real time spe-
cial effects and process incoming
video hue, saturation, brightness and
contrast (known as a Processing Am-
plifier in video jargon) in real time.
Owners of Image FIX also have ac-
cess to direct manipulation of images
stored in the TBC frame buffer.
Having tried rival TBC cards out
in my Amiga-based editing suite on
previous occasions, I must admit to
being somewhat blase on receiving
the TBC Plus for review. My attitude
quickly changed on seeing the quality
of the TBC Plus output. This card
visibly improved the signal even prior
to going to tape!
The control software is fairly intui-
tive, though it does pay to spend a
little time with the manual to find out
exactly what each control does.
Particularly impressive is the com-
posite video filtering and enhance-
ment. The TBC-Plus will let you vary
the frequency at which the colourburst
subcarrier is separated from the video
waveform - in short it helps remove
"colour noise" from the picture. Ele-
ments such as luma delay, automatic
chroma control, Y/C gain and chroma
delay can also be adjusted,
Almost every aspect of an incoming
video signal can be tweaked to give an
output which is truly broadcast quality.
I was a little disappointed with the
chroma delay control, which is -37, Oor
+37 nanoseconds only. I have used other
TBC units with chroma delay adjust-
able in single nanosecond increments
over the same range.
Yet another commendable feature
of the TBC Plus is the ability to have
several video inputs directed to the
card at any one time. This is achieved
through a multi-cable connector which
accepts Y/C input and output, two
composite video channels and a
blackburst or studio sync input.
Reading this list may lead you to
believe you can time base correct two
channels at the same time. Not true.
Only one channel can be processed at
24
AMIGA Review
Desktop Video
any one time, but you can A/B switch
between sources, be they synchronous
or asynchronous. The TBC Plus will
also send out an advance sync pulse
for servo locking video tape decks
and read and generate linear time code,
provided the optional time code mod-
ule is installed.
Image F/X Support
The TBC Plus software has an F/X
Plus menu which allows numerous real
time video manipulations. The effects
are pretty weird, with negative, false
Colour, posterised, solarised, rainbow
distorted and other effects available.
There are also time based effects such
as strobing and trailing and freeze
frames. If you are about to make a
rock video clip, this could the stuff
dreams are made of.
The negative feature has some in-
teresting possibilities, as photographic
negatives could be converted using
this feature and a standard video cam-
era. These could be subsequently saved
as a 24 bit IFF images, or simply
placed directly onto video tape.
There is an additional digital comb
filter option available for the TBC
Plus. Comb filters extract the chroma
and luma signals from a composite
video waveform for separate and hence
better signal processing and output. It
wouid not be of much benefit to users
of component sources, which is why
it's an option.
Owners of Image F/X can use the
TBC Plus as a frame rendering de-
vice. The frame buffer is easily called
up from within the Image F/X "render"
menu. Still image special effects,
processing or enhancement can be per-
formed on a standard Amiga screen
with the final 24 bit output (well, al-
most 24 bit) being sent to the frame
store in the TBC Plus.
The results are then viewed on ei-
ther a composite or Y/C colour moni-
tor. It is here that you can begin to
appreciate the quality of the TBC Plus
encoder circuitry. Its encoded output
has minimal cross colour and excel-
lent saturation and rivals many dedi-
cated 24 bit RGB display cards.
Wrap-up
The TBC Plus for less than two
thousand dollars can give owners of
professional, semi-professional and
even home video equipment access to
multiple generation video editing with
minimal signal degradation. Indeed its
signal enhancement circuitry can ac-
tually improve lousy video footage.
With its built in processing amplifier
functions, multiple inputs, foreign
video standards conversion and real
time video effects, the TBC Plus is
unique in the video marketplace. If
you are in the market for a time base
corrector, GVP's TBC Plus in an ex-
cellent choice. Q
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AMIGA Review
25
Software Review
Scala
MM300
Synchronises Multimedia
I have created numerous multime-
dia presentations for companies
such as Fujitsu, Techway and Tech
Pacific - all using Scala. I have yet to
see a multimedia presentation on any
computer platform which compares
with one created using Scala on the
Amiga.
The latest version continues the tra-
dition of powerful features through an
increasingly easy to use interface-
However, it is not simply a minor
upgrade. MM300 contains many im-
pressive new features.
What's new?
As usual, a few subtle changes in
Andrew
Farrell
checks out
the latest
upgrade to
the worlds
favourite
multimedia
package -
Scala.
colour schemes and the location of
familiar buttons give the appearance
of a new program. However, in opera-
tion MM300 is almost identical to
MM200.
The new File Requester has a
gadget which reveals a thumb nail ver-
sion of all images in the current direc-
tory - including brushes, animations
and pictures. Like the Shuffler, this
function is a tad slow the first time
you use it. Once Scala has scanned
the directory, a permanent image is
stored in the icon .info file for next
time. Selecting images to be included
in a presentation is now considerably
faster.
You can now composite multiple
images onto one backdrop. Scala
achieves this using a combination of
super fast dithering, and image scal-
ing along with clever palette
optimisation. The speed must be ex-
perienced to be believed. It is consid-
erably faster than Art Department.
Drawing tools let you create lines,
rectangles and circles which can be
resized and moved - plus enjoy the
usual transitions and styles. Previously
Scala was largely restricted to pre-
senting rather than creating graphics.
26
AMIGA Review
Software Review
Timing
Scala previously had some limits
in the timing area. However, MM300
has been partially rewritten to allow
for far more sophisticated synchroni-
sation of events. MIDI and SMPTE
driven scripts are now possible, al-
lowing for improved rise in video
based applications. The use of abso-
m superfast
dithering, and
image scaling... 99
lute time points allow you to easily
sync up a presentation with a prere-
corded video segment or other abso-
lute events.
Optimise palette will calculate the
best colour palette for a page when
several pictures, brushes and text col-
ours are used on the same page.
Brushes and pictures can be resized
on the page or when you import them.
They may also be cropped and moved
as often as you like, or converted to
different sizes, resolutions, numbers
of colours and so on.
f i; Choose a background page:
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pts
Backgrounds
Animations
Music
; Sounds
Thumbnails from the file requester
At last the sound on button option
has been restored (it showed up in a
beta of MM200 then disappeared!).
Anti-aliasing also functions better to
help create smooth, flicker free text.
Other new features include
Automagic button creation, new wipes
(FadeToWhite, Nuclear, Random, Dis-
Additional wipes and transitions
* . scala Multimedia MM3DG
3 Hem Features of Scala MM30O
4 Draining tools
5 Chart are real cas
6 Grauith chart
7 Brush Resizing
8 Brush cropping
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cancel
solve, Ants, Rollodex, Flipover, and
Ccccut), better horizontal scrolling,
separate underline colour, new back-
grounds, transparent boxes, hard disk
sound playback and 24-bit picture pre-
view.
New EX modules included are
MIDI 2.0, CDTV 2.0 (with the ability
Scala vs
Mediapoint
A new player arrived on
the scene just as Scala
MM300 was released.
Mediapoint is less expen-
sive, does not require a
dongle and offers superior
scheduling capabilities.
However, the Interface Is
not as pleasant to use and
many of the real smart fea-
tures are lacking. Whilst
Mediapoint would be a
strong competitor with
MM200, the new version is
considerably more ad-
vanced. Mediapoint is no
competition for Scala
MM300.
AMIGA Review
27
Software Review
^^^^™
to play from within any track) and
various genlock and 24-bit EXes.
Overall, a very impressive number of
improvements. It will be interesting to
see how the new competition stacks up.
Wrap-up
Upgrades are available for $200
complete with new manuals, disks and
a new key. Fast turnaround is prom-
ised, so you won't be without your
ScaLa dongle for more than a few days.
The new version MM300 has a street
price of $549. For more information
call Power Peripherals (03) 532 8553.
Overall, a very worthwhile im-
provement to a great program. □
f scala Multimedia MM308
IB Sound Enhancements
li.- Text new
12 Antialiasing
13 snimiab
14 Utilities
15 EH8S
16 EX8S2
17 Art series
1R ctnnthp mucin
y Pause and Goto Menu
SCALA
11
17
8
15
11
11
11
8
3 ctrm
Ulait in seconds frames ^llniei^ Toe
o: Chart are real easy * 5 ►OK
..ecurHitthig: Pages < ►
Cancel
Improved timing control
.omputer
affair
March
Specials
Love at first byte
SCSI Tape Drives from $450
Emplant Mac Emulator $790
Oktagon 2008 SCSI-2 $395
MultiFace III (2S/1P) $295
Amiga 2000 (New!) $499
A2O00/120MB HD $995
A2091/120MB HD $599
1084s Monitors $390
A570 CD-ROM S269
NEC CDs & Monitors $Call
A2060 ArcNet Card $129
CDTV Titles from $20
CD 32 Titles from $69
Call for latest pricing on ..
Amiga Hardware
Addison Wesley Books
Bruce Smith Books
CD-ROMs & Disks
DeskTop Video Solutions
Neriki & E.D, Genlocks
GVP Hardware
Hard Drives (IDE/SCSI)
Networking Solutions
QuickNet now SAN A-1I
Scanners/Digitisers
Software
337 Penshurst St., Wllloughby 2068 Sydney
Tel: 02-417-5155
Fax: 02-41 7-5542 BBS: 02-970-6444
Software PC Emulation
for Amiga Computers
Pi 5
Features:
• Runs on any Amiga, multitasks fully
• Up to 2 floppy & 2 hard disks emulated
• Support for high density floppies
• Support for up to 256 colours
• MDA, CGA, EGA & VGA support,
• Serial & parallel port emulation
• Mouse & CD-ROM support
• Supports GoldenGate bridge cards
• MSDOS not included
Available from all good Amiga dealers.
aujsjH
Distributed by:
Tel. (03) 583 8806
Fax. (03) 585 1074
28
AMIGA Review
ra
Search for
Sanchez
by Greg Abernethy
I'll kick off the new education col-
umn by reviewing a great new ti-
tle from Rush Software. Situated
at Gerroa, on the New South Wales
south coast, Rush has produced a large
range of quality educational titles,
some of which I'll review in future
issues.
As a top investigator with
G.I. A.N. T. it is your job to capture
the agents of R.U.N.T. (Really Un-
tidy Nasty Types), who have parts of
a code that will enable you to find the
location of Sanchez' hideout. You
must then negotiate a maze to be able
to enter his hideout and capture him.
Your job is made harder by the fact
that the agents have logic bombs
which, if not defused, scramble
thought patterns, causing confusion
and loss of memory. To defuse a logic
bomb you have to solve a logic puz-
zle, and these include word scram-
bles, codes and pattern matching. I
found the puzzles were challenging
and fun, while not detracting from the
smooth flow of the game.
You are assisted in the field by Agent
13 who gives you information on the
location of the enemy agents. All the
information is in the form of clues, such
as "The RUNT agent was headed for a
famous landmark opened in 1932". It is
up to you to decide which city in Aus-
tralia matches the clue.
There are a large number of clues
for the various cities around Australia,
some easy to solve, others requiring
some research. Also, several of the
clues involve latitude and longitude,
causing me to dust off the trusty school
atlas.
My daughter spent many long hours
chasing the agents of R.U.N.T. around
Australia and very quickly learnt how
to use her atlas correctly as well as
knowing the location of all the major
cities in Australia.
Although rather simplistic, the
graphics throughout the program are
colourful and give the game a comic
book feel. There are several
Education
animations that add a distinct
"Maxwell Smart" touch. Sound is used
to good effect in several scenes.
I found the game interesting to play,
as well as providing a challenging
means of teaching the geography of
Australia. There were several clues
that required the use of an encyclo-
paedia, and as mentioned above, I be-
came quite proficient at using the at-
las to find longitude and latitude read-
ings. The logic puzzles are a great
feature of the game, and the word lists
used can be edited to suit the user's
need.
Games can be saved to disk while
you are visiting Head Office. This
solves the problem, in a classroom
situation, of being unable to finish the
game in a specified period of time.
There are three levels of difficulty,
that are used to determine the length
of time available to solve the logic
puzzles. Also available is Search For
Sanchez in New Zealand.
As an educational tool, 1 feci Sear ch
For Sanchez is excellent and would
recommend it for school and home
use. Search For Sanchez is available
only from Rush Software. For details
on pricing and ordering contact them
on (042) 342107 or (042) 617442. Q
AMIGA Review
29
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Amiga Vision Professional £139.00
Anim Workshop S 99.95
Anim Wo rkshop V2 $165.00
Art Department Abekas Driver $209.00
Art Department Conversion Pack $ 84.95
Art Department Epson Drivers $195.00
Art Department Pro V2.3 $275.00
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Bars & Pipes Creativity Kit $ 69.95
Bars & Pipes MultiMedia Kit $ 59.95
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BcardMaster S 97.50
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Broadcast Titler 2 Hi-Res S429.00
Calagari 24 £476,00
Calculus S 59.95
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Contact V2.0 S 74.00
Cross Dos V5.0/ Cross PC $59.95
Cycleman (Suit Imagine) S 69.95
Cyclemusdes (Suit Imagine) $169.00
Cygnus Ed ProfessionalVas $125.00
Deluxe Mus ic V2 S 1 85, 00
Deluxe Paint 4.1 $ 99.95
Deluxe Paint 4.5 AG A $139.00
Directory Opus V4.1 1 S1 04.95
DirWork 2.0 $ CALL
Distant Suns V4. 2 $ 79.95
Easy AMOS $ 94.95
Edge $109.95
Electric Thesaurus $ 56.95
Essence for Imagine $ 74.95
Final Copy II (Australian Version) $145.00
Final Writer (Australian Version) $219.00
Fontasia 300 CG Fonts $ 79.95
GigaMemV3 $159.00
H isoft Dev Pack 3 $122.95
Home Office Kit Deluxe $185.00
Hoopy Paint $ 59.95
Humanoid V1 .0 (Suit Imagine) $269.00
Hypercache Pro $ 54.95
* Prices with NEW or CALL were unknown
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SAS C 6.5
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Vista Lite
$ 69.95
Brilliance
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lmageFXV1.5
Imagemaster R/T 1.0
Imagine V3
Imagine Diner Objects
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Intro Cad Plus
Kind Words 3
Mac to DOS
Magic Lantern
Mapmaster (Suit Imagine)
Max! Plan 4
Media Point 3.0
Mini Office
Montage 24
Montage Fqntpack 1
Morph Plus
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PC-Task (Supports 256 Colour VGA)
PageStream HotLinks V1 .1
Pagesetter V3
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PageStream Font Newsletter
at the time of publication.
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PageStream Font Pack 1
PageStream V2.2 & 47 Fonts
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Panorama V3
PatchMeister (Bars & Pipes)
Pelican Press
Pixel 3D S Anim Workshop Pack
Playmation
Power Copy Professional V3.03a
Power Packer Professional V4
Printmaster Plus
Pro Fonts Volume 1 (Suit ProWrite)
Pro Fonts Volume 2 (Suit ProWrite)
ProWrite 3.3
Professional Calc V2 AGA
Professional Draw V3.0
Professional Page 3.0
Professional Page V4.1
Proper Grammer II
Quarterback Tools Deluxe
Quarterback V6
QuickWrite
Real 3D V2
SAS C V6.5 Dev System
Scala HT
ScalaMM210
Soala MM300 (NEW VERSION)
Scala EE100 Echo (Suit MM300)
Scala Art Library Voi 2
Scala Art Library Vol 3
Scala Music Pack
Scapemaker V3.0
Scenery Animator V4
SoftClipart Animals
Softciipart Classic
SoftClipart Collectors
SoftClipart People
SoftFaces Vol 1,2,3,4 (each)
Super Desk Jet Drivers V2
Super Jam V1.1
Supsrbase Personal II
Superbase Personal 4
Superbase Pro 4 V1.3
Tapeworm
TAKE 2
TV Paint (IV24 or Retina)
True Print 24
TypeSmith V2
Video Director
Virtual Reality Studio V2
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Vista Lite
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Wordworth V2 AGA
Your Family Tree
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Commodore
DEALER
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Melway Fief: Page 51 A8
oJfcd.
Equipment
Competitive pricing on all Commodore computers and
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CD , 1942 monitors and more!
EPSON EPSON
EPSON Scanners
24bit Flat Beds
SCANNER SCANNER
• GT6500 {Up to eoo dpi) $1 985-
• GT8000 (Up to aoo dpi) $2685-
*Requires ASDG Epson Drivers and Cable,
AMIGA Books
ABACUS Amiga Printers In & Out $ 49.95
Amiga Multimedia $ 34.95
Amiga Tips & Secrets (Covers 3,0) $ 29.95
Amiga for Beginners $ 29.95
AmigaDos In & Out $ 39.95
AmigaDos Reference Guide $ 34.95
Mapping the Amiga (2nd Edition) $ 49.95
The ARexx Cookbook $ 64.95
Understanding Imagine V3.0 $ SOON
Using ARexx on the Amiga $ 54.95
Bruce Smith Books
Mastering Amiga AMOS $ 59.95
Mastering AmigaDos Volume 1 $ 59.95
Mastering AmigaDos Volume 2 $ 59.95
Mastering AmigaDos 3 $ 59.95
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Mastering Amiga System $ 59.95
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* Just some of our range
HGVJjjj GREfflVAll£Y PRODUCTS
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|» SCSI Kit suit above $ 199-
FPU Kit 68882 40MHz $ 319-
FPU Kit 68882 50MHz $ 399-
24 Bit Display at Blinding Speed
• GVP EGS Spectrum 2MB
MX AMIGA GAMES
Allan Borders Cricket
Amiga
$ 57.50
Blade of Destiny
Amiga
$ 66.95
Brutal Sports Football
AGA
$SOON
Fire Force
CD32
$ 66.95
Ishar
AGA
$ 66.95
Ishar 2
AGA
$ 66.95
Jurassic Park
Amiga
$ 57.50
Micro Machines
Amiga
$ 57.50
Oscar
AGA
$ 66.95
Perihelion
Amiga
$SOON
Sensible Soccer
CD32
$ 66.95
Super Methane Brothers
CD32
$ 66.95
Zool 2 . jt
a nigo
$66.95
, y pgtades » ^|
;hips
Due to RAM Prices
Changing Daily Please
Call for Today's Price
QuickNe
Available &
! On Display
Accelerators & RAM
Expansion
A500/600:
• A500 51 2k RAM Expansion w/ No Clock $ 49- 1
• A600 1 MB RAM Expansion w/ Clock $ 119-1
• A600 1 6bit PCM/C I A C redit Card RAM 2MB $299- 1
• A600 16bit PCM/CIA Credit Card RAM 4MB $ 469- 1
• GVP A530+ '030 40 MHz 1 MB RAM from $ 999-
• VXL 030 25 MHz No Co-Pro 0MB $ 325-
•VXL 030 25 Mhzw/ 68882 Co-Pro $ 525- 1
• VXL 32bit RAM 2MB (Suit above VXL 030} $ 549- 1
A1200:
• G VP A1 200 SCSI Ctr w/ No Co-Pro & 1 M B $ 499- *
• GVP A1 200 SCSI Ctr w/ 33Hz 688B2 & 4MB $ 949- 1
■ GVP A1 230 Series II (New Model) See Box On Left I
• Microboii&s MBX1200Z w/ 68881 & Clock 0MB S 279- 1
A2000:
• GVP G-Force 030 2SMHz w/ 68882 & 1 MB $ 399-
- GVP G-Foroe 030 40MHz v/l 68882 & 4MB $1275-
- GVP G-Force 040 33 MHz w! 4 MB 60ns RAM $1 999- 1
A4000:
■ DKB 31 28 Ram Exp up to 1 28MB 32bit RAM S 749- 1
■ GVP A4006 HardCard Up to 8MB 1 6bit RAM S 329-
• Fastlane SCSI II Expansion Card $ 995-
■ GVP 40MHz '040 Up to 32 MB 32bii RAM SSOOtj]
A500/A2000 Chip RAM Expansion:
• DKB MegaChip board S 369-!
How to Order
ti
Its Easy"
Visa, I
Direct!
freight 1
We Accept
Cash, Cheque, Bankcard,
Mastercard, Money Order or
Deposit, Please call for current
charges.
6 VMM
How:
Phone, write, fax or come and see us inl
our showroom. Please include phone I
number when writing or faxing. All letters |
will be answered.
*Please do not send cash through the mail
Free Mouse Mat
with every order over $100-
■Tlits Ad was produced entirely using Amigas
: Ali Pricey Subject to Change Without Notice
Postal Address: P.O. Box 627, Croydon, Victoria 3136
W) 725 6786
E & O E
;■.■■; ■■, :::., ■■ . ... ,
Help Line
'■'■■ : ::.■:.
Icons,
RAM Disk
and the Shell
In a jam? Need help?
Can 't figure it out?
Write to our new Help
Line column where our
team of experts will
solve your problems
and provide plain
English answers to get
you back on track.
Lost icons
Dear Help Line, I have Final Copy
II on the hard drive of my Amiga
2000. When I go into my Final Copy
drawer I can see ail the drawers - FC
Files, FC Libs, FC Spell and so on,
but the Final Copy II icon to start the
program is missing.
I know I haven't deleted it. so what
has happened to it?
Confused,
Albany WA
ACAR; If the icon hasn't been de-
leted, it's probably accidentally been
moved or dropped into another
drawer. Try opening up all the draw-
ers around where your icon used to
be.
It's very easy to drop an icon over
the top of a drawer by accident This
tells your Amiga you want to put the
file inside the drawer. Once you find
it, all you need to do is drag it outside
the open window and put it back where
it belongs.
What is the Shell?
Dear Help Line, I have recently
bought a second hand Amiga 500 from
a friend and it is running Workbench
1.3. I am fairly computer illiterate.
There is an icon in there called shell. I
read somewhere that if you double
clicked on this and typed in DIR you
could get a listing of all the files on
my Workbench disk, I have also been
able to list files on my external disk
drive by using the CD DF1: command.
The problem that I am having is that
when I have finished looking around I
have to reboot the computer to get rid
of this window. Is there an easier way?
Sally Stroud,
Meering Vic
ACAR: Fortunately there is a
faster and easier way to close this
window. Try typing in EN DC LI or
ENDSHELL into your shell window.
Note there are no spaces in either of
these commands.
In the later versions of Workbench
- Workbench 2 onwards - there is also
a close gadget on all shell windows, a
very worthy addition to the software.
Also if you type in CD C: <return>
then DIR <return> you will gel a list-
ing of all the commands available to
you from the C directory.
RAM Disk?
Dear Help Line, Whenever I load
Workbench it comes up with an icon
called Ram Disk. If I double click on
it it opens up a window but there is
nothing in it. What does the Ram Disk
do and why is it there?
Paul McEwane,
Tourello Vic
ACAR: The RAM Disk is a tempo-
rary storage area. It works like a disk
drive, only whatever you put in there
is lost when you turn your Amiga off.
So, what's it good for?
Imagine you had to copy something
from one disk to another - particu-
larly on an Amiga without a second
drive. Enter the Ram Disk. You can
copy your file to the RAM Disk, eject
the source disk and insert the destina-
tion disk-
Now copy the icon or file from RAM
onto your destination disk. Hey presto.
Small programs can even be put into
the Ram Disk with the advantage be-
ing that they load much faster front
RAM than from disk.
Don't forget though that the RAM
Disk is using the computer's memory.
The more you put in RAM the more
memory it uses. It grows to accommo-
date the storage space it needs.
You must remember that if you turn
off or reboot your Amiga, everything
in its memory is lost. This also applies
to information in the Ram Disk, so
don't forget to save it first before
Amiga Training and Help
If you live in the Sydney area and would like personalized help, training and advice call Wall Street Video.
We provide support for both home use and business applications as well as training on hundreds of programs.
Ph: (02) 411-2108
32
AMIGA Review
Help Line
rebooting or turning off your Amiga.
A1200 game problems
Dear Help Line, I have just up-
graded my A500 to an AI200HD. It's
a great machine but some of my old
games won't work. Is there anything I
can do to make them work?
Ken Ryan
Telegraph Pt, NSW
AGAR; Yes, there are several
things that you can do to make your
A 1200 more compatible with older
software.
The first of these is what is known
as the Amiga Early Startup Menu. As
you turn on or reboot your computer,
hold down both mouse buttons and a
new menu will appear on your screen.
There are several options, but the
one you need to select is Display Op-
tions. The following menu allows you
to choose between three chip
emulations. Select Original and then
click on use. You may also wish to
click on Boot Options and click on the
check box next to Disable CPU Caches
and select use.
The last step is to put your game
disk in DFO: and click on Boot.
Hopefully your game or program
will now work.
Another option available out there
is a disk called Make it Work by Nico
Francois which is in the public do-
main - which means it can be freely
copied and is available very cheap
from various freely distributable soft-
ware. libraries. You insert this disk in
DFO: and turn on the computer; once
it's loaded, select Boot Kicks tart 1.3.
This program is very good and allows
many other older games to work on
the A 1200. There are also a few other
versions of similar programs out there.
Make It Work is available from Wall
Challenge Corner
.Dear Help Line, I have a weird
problem. that has : been irking me
. for some lime, Whenever. r run
I ;.HARC, my machine guru's. I have
; tried 1 reinstalling., the. program!;!,
have! rei nstal led Workbench. I even
asked a Mend who is supposedly
an Ami ga; expert to : come ] by: ; and
fix it. However, so Far nobody has
■been able to : . solve my problem. : :
■ What- am I doing. .wrong? '.
Kluong Shore
: Gladesville
ACAR: Obviously you have some
seriously .weird things going- down
.at your -house. Has anyone, .else ex-
perienced- this problem'.' Have you
tried rebooting ? How are you hold-..
ing your tongue when you run::.
LHARC? -But seriously folks, that 's
an. 'odd one. . . .
'. It sounds like y'o'umayJuive some -
strange hardware problem. Do any
Street Video as well as places like
Amadeus Computers, and PD librar-
ies such as Prime Artifax and
Megadisc.
Lost time
Dear Help Line, I have an Amiga
600 which I recently purchased. I un-
derstand that I can set the correct time
on it but every time I set it and reboot
the time and date are lost.
What am I doing wrong?
Craig Hartigan
Manly, NSW
ACAR: Probably nothing. The
Amiga. 600 in its standard trim does
not have a battery backed up clock.
Normally when you purchase a
oMe.r programs act- up? Are you'-
■ sure'' you're.-, .copying::, the: n ew.
-.- LHARC- ■oyer'ihe'.old 'one? Make:
sure] you're- -not gets ing aprdiei-"
tion bit set ■error:- which means '
the old LHAR Q can't be deleted.: '.I'.
DirOPUS can fix the -problem -
by. highlighting the. file .and. .select- .
■ ing protect. -Make . sure deletable
' is -ticked. :.."."" '■■'■■:■■ .
.Anyone, with; any more ideas
should send them in toourChai- ; :
lenge Corner, :21;.Darley, Road,
Randwick 2031.
: IF you've got a really tough one,
send it in to us and we '11 try to :
help you. out. Include information
about your machine - like which
Workbench you're running, which ,
• CPU,, what programs were running;: .
'when the; machine did-someming;;
. odd and : so; oh . The more in form a- :
tion; you give us the better.
memory expansion card for your 600
they come with this part on the board.
There is a Ni-Cad battery on the card
which gets charged while you are us-
ing the computer.
You set up the time and date on the
computer and save it. Then when you
turn off the computer it keeps the cor-
rect time because of the rechargeable
battery on the card.
You also have the option of pur-
chasing a card for your A600 which
doesn 'i include extra memory, but has
the clock on it. This is cheaper, but in
the long run you're probably better
off with the memory as well.
Even if you don't see the need far it
now, you probably will in the near
future. □
Attention all new A1200 owners in Australia and New Zealand
If you are having problems getting to grips with your new machine then "An Introduction to the Amiga 1200"
is for you. It is a One Hour Training Video designed to get you up and running with the rninirnum amount of
fuss. Order your copy now by Bankcard, Mastercard or Visa on;
Ph: (02) 411-2108 or International callers on 0011 612 4112108
AMIGA Review
33
Competition
Reader's Survey
Competition Results
Thank you to everyone who re
turned our reader survey form
from the January issue of
Amiga Review. The information we
Moopy Paint from Tup soft.
were able to glean from the survey
has proved invaluable in helping to
fine tune the magazine to your needs.
Starting this month, you'll see
we've made some noticeable improve-
ments inside the magazine. There's
our new desktop publishing column.
New Products and Future Watch sec-
tions and revamped entertainment sec-
tion. Look for more additions over
coming months ... but now to our prize
winners.
Commodore have very kindly do-
nated a new Amiga CD32 player, cur-
rently the biggest selling CD based
games console in the world. Addi-
tional prizes were provided by Tupsoft
(02) 482 7040, one of Australia's lead-
ing importers of productivity software,
and Wall Street Video (02) 411 2108,
the Australian Amiga training com-
pany who now have videos selling
around the world.
1st Prize
The winner of the CD32 player
from Commodore is:
Hugh Griffith of Eumungerie, NSW
2nd Prize Winners
The winners of Hoopy Paint, the
most fun you can have in a paint pro-
gram, are:
Colin Bolton of Bondi Beach, NSW
MG Jefferies of Farrer, ACT
B Benyon of Woodridge, QM
An introduction to the A 1200, a one
hour video from Wall St Video.
3rd Prize Winners
The winners of the A 1200 Intro-
ductory Video, getting you up and run-
ning on your A 1200, are:
P F Kitto of Mt Lawley, WA
Xenos Tang of Kowloon, Hong Kong
Winners will also be notified by
mail. Prizes will be despatched to the
winners directly by relevant sponsor.
Thank you to those companies who
sponsored our reader survey:
Cr
TUPsoSt
mu.
fIDtV
The Amiga CD-32 from Commodore
34
AMIGA Review
CsjJJ lur a FriEE dlssk cshsiJdcjus
We Guarantee
Satisfaction
Amadeus
Computers
FREE CALL: 008 808 503
Sydney: (02) 652 2712
international: 612 652 2712
Fax: 02 652 1515
34 Tecoma Drive, Glenorie NSW 2157
Modems
1 4400 Maestro Fax/Data Modems
slill only... $599
Pre-Loved Hardware
A500s. 2000s, drives and more.
Call for details.
A4000 Expansions
4008 SCSI Controller $349
Seagate Hard Drives
SIMM Modules 1 or 4 MB.
Trade in your 1 MBs for a 4MB
A1200 Expansions
GVP 1 230 Turbo Series II $1 399
SOMhz with 4MB RAM and Clock!
(40Mhz version available)
SCSI Option
BQMhz 68882 Co-Pro
MBX1200Z with Clock
Call for SIMM prices
Clock module still only
1 20MB Seagate H-Drives
Trade in old 40MB ■ save
Other sizes available.
Amiga 1200
I
$399
$249
$49
$549
$150
Capture
24-bit
images
direct from
live video!
;!}/lJln
Desktop Video
New GVP TBC plus $1699
GVP G-Lock $799
Vidi Amiga 24bit Real Time Frame
Grabber with p/supply $749
Vidi Amiga 12bit Real Time Frame
Grabber with p/supply $449
Trade in your o!d Vidi 12 and
save
$150
Vidi Amiga 12
$275
EGS Spectrum 2MB
$1049
2MB
$1149
Electronic Design
PAL Genlock
$599
Y/C Genlock
$799
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m
Your choice
of hard drive, #;• js£«
RAM and
accelerator.. ,
Amiga 4000
'030 or '040,
extra RAM
and larger
drives are
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Opal Vision Video Modules Due
Out this month!. Call for info.
Media Point
$549
Montage
Scaia Home Titier
$499
$149
Scala MM 300
$549
AmiBack 2.0 PLUS Tools
$119
Anim Workshop
$199
Art Dept Pro 2.3
$279
Art Dept Pro Tools
$249
Art Dept Pro Control
$99
Bibie Reader Pro
$149
Bible Scholar
$199
Blitz Basic 2
$199
Brillance
$269
CanDo 2.51
$209
300 CG or Postscript Fonts $89
Contact 2.1
$79
Cygnus Ed
Deluxe Paint 4.1
$139
$99
Deluxe Paint AGA
$149
Devpack 3
$149
Directory Opus 4.11
Distant Suns 4.2
$109
$99
Easyledgers 2
$Ca!i
Final Copy II
$139
Final Writer
$219
HyperCache Pro
$59
Imagine 3
SCall
Organise
$19
Pagestream 3
$Call
Pen Pa! 1 .5
$89
Personal Paint IV
$99
Phasar 4.09
$99
PixeS 3D
$149
MediaPotat
W~& 1
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ernoulU Drives
Affordable ^IBBBBW.
mass e=i:..-.-- *i
storage - up
to 150Mb on »
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Shock proof,
solid design, from $1 ,350.00
Professional AMOS
Professional Calc 2
Professional Page 4
ProWrite 3.3
Quarterback Tools Deluxe
Quarterback V6- NEW
Real 3D 2.4 - OUT NOW
SAS "C" 6,5 now out
Scenery Animator 4
SuperBase Personal 4
SuperBase Pro 4 V1 .3
True Print 24
TypeSmith V2.0
Vista Pro 3
X-CAD 2000
X-CAD 3000
X-Copy Professional
Music/M ID I/Samplers
MIDI interface
MegaMix Master
GVP DSS Plus
Superjam!
Deluxe Music 2
Bars and Pipes Pro 2
$159
$229
$149
$99
$149
$Call
$899
$399
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$179
$299
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S219
$99
$349
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$109
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A1200 Keyboard Skins
Printers: Citizen, Hewlett
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Memory: PCMCIA 2MB RAM
forA600/1200 $249
Access the
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and
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■ ■
Desktop Publishing
Postscript is
Postscript
You would be amazed how
many calls I get from people
searching near and far for a
bureau capable of outputting Amiga
files. Now, most of these are people
who are using a program capable of
Postscript output. A Postscript file de-
scribes a document using a language
understood by many types of output
devices.
Think of it as a standard way of
driving many types of high quality
printing devices - ranging from col-
our thermal printers, toner based desk-
top Postscript printers, to image set-
ters costing several hundred thousand
dollars.
Programs such as Professional
Page, Pagestream, Art Expression,
Professional Draw and Final Copy
can all create a Postscript file instead
of printing to your regular printer. This
file is just a big text file - you can
view it in any text editor or word
processor. Some of the commands are
English like, and you'll also see text
from your page appearing amidst all
the gobbly-gook.
Desktop
Publishing
by Andrew Farrell
Once you convert your page to post-
script, it can be sent to almost any
output bureau. You see, Postscript is
Postscript. The only small hurdle you
need to face is how to get it there.
Here is where there are a few quirks
you should know about - and make
sure your bureau knows about.
Which format?
The simplest method is to save the
file onto an MS-DOS 720K disk. If
you have a machine with Workbench
2.1 or higher, you'll find an icon called
PCO: on your Workbench drive. It's
in a drawer called DOSDrivers, in the
Storage drawer. Move this icon to your
devs DOSDriver drawer in the devs
drawer.
Now when you reboot your ma-
chine, the device PCO: will be mounted
for use automatically. This device
works much like DFO: - it lets you
access a floppy disk in your internal
floppy drive - however when you ask
to see PCO: from any file requester,
the Amiga will see DFO: as a 720K
MS-DOS disk.
You can ask format PCO:, select it
in a disk utility like DirOPUS, access
it from the SHELL - or from directly
within the print to postscript requester
of your particular desktop publishing
program. So, it's simple to just write
a postscript file directly to a MS-DOS
disk - once you've formatted it, of
course.
You'll see an icon for PCO: on your
Workbench and you can select it and
use the pull-down format option on
the Workbench menu to format it. This
disk should be able to be read by al-
most all image output bureaus - in-
cluding Mac-based operations.
Like the Amiga, the Apple Macin-
tosh has the ability to read MS-DOS
disks. Of course, you're limited to
moving files around which are small
enough to fit on one disk. Is there a
way around this?
Compression
Once your files start getting too
big to fit on one floppy, you have
several options. One is to compress
the file to make it smaller. Now this
may sound like some mystical proc-
ess, however compression is actually
very logical and simple to explain.
Imagine you're looking at a large
football stadium - which is your post-
script file. You notice that certain
groups of seats are empty. Now let' s
say you're describing which seats are
empty and which are full. You could
list every seat, and then notate whether
it was full or empty. Inefficient and
clumsy - but this is like an
uncompressed file.
Compression would say something
like Al - full, A2 - full, A3-A9 -
empty, A 10 full... and so on. As you
can see we've saved some space by
dealing with groups of vacant seats
rather than listing each individually.
This is the basic priniciple behind
compression, however in practice it is
considerably more complex than this.
Fortunately, programs like ZIP,
LHARC and others do all the hard
work for you. Unfortunately, these pro-
grams can only be used from the com-
mand line (SHELL) - although there
are some neat public domain utilities
that make it a mouse-driven affair.
Programs like DirOPUS can also be
configured to handle the compression
process most effectively.
Postscript is especially good at be-
ing compressed, because it is inher-
ently wasteful in the way it describes
things. This is particularly true when
you start dealing with images. If you
view a Postscript file in your favour-
36
AMIGA Review
olut ons
endered
Solutions Rendered Pty. Ltd. ACN 057 923 645
We give you the complete solution!
Call Mike, Jon or Terry on (02) 477 5353
or fax your requirements on (02) 476 5736
9 Miller Ave., Hornsby NSW 2077
PO Box 47, Hornsby NSW 2077
Mail or phone orders happily accepted!
Blue Ribbon Soundworks from $59
We have the complete product range in stock
including Bars and Pipes Pro 2 (with all the
add-on tool packs), the One Stop Music Shop,
The Patchmeister and SuperJam. Hearing is
believing. Pop in for a demo of THE music sys-
tem for hobbyists and pro's alike.
Software Specials
SAS C V6.3 (u/g to 6.5 for $1 40) $250
Cygnus Ed (perfect for SAS-C) $149
Pagestream 2.2 - Blowout pack $169
Final Writer - used to produce this ad! $219
Final Copy II - UK dictionary $145
Procalc - the best spreadsheet! $235
Vista Pro - build your own virtual world $235
Distant Suns $99
Deluxe Music Construction Set 2 $229
Broadcast Titler II Super Hi-Res $399
Montage 24 $499
Directory Opus $119
CD-Roms from $39
Just got a CD-Rom drive and have nothing to
look at? We carry a range of CD-Roms inc.
Aminet, GIFs Galore, Fish Collections, For
Adults Only, Clip Art, Photo CD collections etc.
Hoopy Write New and Fun $59.95
The Amiga Word Processor written just for kids.
Cut, copy and paste. Word wrap. Speaks your
text aloud. Talking menus. 4 built in games.
Supports colour printers. Easy to use.
Hoopy Paint New and Fun $59.95
The kids paint program that mums & dads love
to use. More than 80 outline pictures built in,
heaps of clip art, lots of zany sound effects add
to the fun. When your creation is finished print it
out and hang it on the fridge.
We carry a wide range of Amiga productivity
software and peripheral hardware including
GVP, Golden Image etc. Call for best pricing!
— '
Hardware Bargains!
Primera
Primera Colour Printer from $1995 ex tax
THE choice for photo-retouch, colour proofing,
etc. Full colour glossy prints at an affordable
price. Change the ribbon and paper for Dye
Sublimation (continuous tone) printing for
photo-realistic output! Outputs on overhead
transparencies and T-Shirt transfer paper too!
Suitable for PC's and Macs too.
Ask about our bonus offer!
In stock NOW! Call for demo.
QuickNet $CALL
Share hard disks, printers, CD-Roms, programs
and data. Easy to install. See a real network
running in our office.
CD-Rom Drives from $495
Yes, we carry NEC CD-Rom drives, both inter-
na! and external. Kodak Photo-CD compatible.
Complete with cables, Xetec software driver
and 2 CD-Roms.
■ CDR-25 ext. $495
• CDR-55 internal $695
• CDR-74 external $945
Hand Scanners from $279
Golden Image hand scanners in stock. Great
for scanning logos, clip art, etc.
Video Digitizers from $259
Yes, we have the great Vidi Amiga 12 in stock!
Ask about our Scanning and
Colour Printing service.
How to order: We accept cash, cheques,
Bankcard, Visa, Mastercard, Money Order or
Direct Deposit. Phone, write, fax or pop in.
Pricing subject to change without notice.
We are open 9-6pm Mon to Fri, 9-2pm Sat.
Desktop Publishing
rVotessitmal Page U4.1 IsltM^ Hold Disk Inc.
S\ , 'I , 1 , 9 | , 1 , *\ , '! , *l , 1 ■ 1 ,"[ ."I ."I ?°\ .-I
5 I ,"i ."I ,"i
Page NaneH
Page tt Offset {
Size: j£KLEIx
OStondard (Q H3
O Legal Q M
Margins: left
i- i. jlit
top MfctlM
but
Co limns QH Butter QKEGEI
[Postscript Output Specs |
| "lie ; | Cancel |
I F.e-L: £d Hardpaie
I I I Baiiii' ■■■'
•Hogus
Amadens
ter
US
mEECALL: 0Q8S035CS
tyinwr if M2 27I2
irtmreiiumi: £ti esa 2712
Fax: 02 6591315
3* Teccrn a Drt-^, OSot cfie NSW ?1
J
00
Posn,
Si -iii- xQjUM' Y
Rot 5t .tmQJtM"
(^Portrait QLandscape
Output Page Size X KEH 1
□ Mo Eject
[■jCrop^Reg, narks: I en
open sp . : QHjEJDM tile
Ttanrnw I
-r " ul«(" :■
AirjepPro23
VJJ
S270
ArOep ProTcols $245
jntiiv
X w
XC.1J AiUU
By rotating your page as per the specification on this above output requester,
you will save film and time. This may help land you a better cost from your
bureau. Check with your bureau on the correct output page size
ite text editor you'll see bitmap im-
ages appear as great strings of num-
bers - and often there will be a long
series of the one number. Here, as you
saw earlier, is where compression
works very well.
It is not uncommon for a com-
pressed Postscript file to be around
one-fifth the size of the original.
A small snag
In the Amiga world we are blessed
with almost every compression method
known to man. However, LHARC is
by far the most commonplace. In PC
land, ZIP seems to rule supreme, al-
though most PC based bureaus can
handle LHARC files happily. LHARC
has had less problems with compat-
ibility over different version than ZIP,
so it is often preferred.
In the Mac world, LHARC is riot
so commonplace. In fact, I had a hard
time tracking down a Mac owner who
Welcome back to good "old fashioned "courteous servlc
Stocked just for]
g-Foot 20DW AMIGA -
mca disable ON/OFF S
ctetarl ?W ROM
cksfiul 2JK ROM
user Deniss
~S/5 Agnus 2MEgAqfjy
ary chip 5788
ektoard Plus I
Ek-joarii (2 waj aeooui
!3C A500 Interna! Drive
nc tec E*!l Dwe-
ll] IDE Coiincjllei
5" IDE Hard Drive
5"H3raD:i\T
'2 meg A500 expaii mem
AC 6*50! 0SD0 3 5" Disks
lectrorac Design PAL Betitocfc
olden Image H/Scamet
I WScinnerWiOCS
lock toi AI20O
icintor Swtcri Box rrorr
SCARTWmiga 1084 ca&le
SCSI 25 lo 25 70Dmm cable
Al20Dio3.5"HC sun mount
Mortem cable strati
Prbterexlmaw i
C6J Power supp^iss relurD
■
A4D00VG3D Sciioo part
* More l atest Amiaa Goodies t
* Wow.! Final Writer $219
I • Final Copy II B $1S9
AMIGA
A1 200 Dual HDmtfflcciMi
A60O School Paclage
A8O0 HD School Paciune
Easy Ledgers n Its Coming Soon 1
VIDI 12.. 12bit Ileal time $449
Twilight Zone Adult Disk $25
Brilliance.. It is Brilliant!. $269
Intra To A1200 Video SS9
GP Fax; Incredible 1 ...$149
CD32 Titles ■ • Pinball fantasies ,
Morph , rj-Gcncrat3on , Trolls ,
Liberation, 1869 , Whales Voyage ,
Jurassic Park late January i Zool ,
Gcaisis, Surf Ntoja. Sensible Soccer
Boot , Alfred Chicken >N%el Mansell
Alore Coming Soon All CD's $69
MPEG Module is HERE/ SCALL
CD 32 Warner BrosM ovics SOON
CASH
C.O.D.
■j Shop: 8S Tufnmul Place . ST. Andrew, N.S ,W. 2544
j Mtmb*f or AUSTRALASIAN AMIGA DEVH.OPERS ASSOCIATION
J9-5 »on-Frl, 9-12 Sot. Fwu COS) 403 0405
"- Mill Orders: P.O. BM150M1NTO, K.S.W. J5M
lUNITECH ELECTRONICS
Fry. Ltd.
(02) 820 3555
jjso ivmabtc front yG
Amiga Computer Specialis
Est. 1978
Prices subject to change without notice
ADPro 2.5
New user interface as well as more loaders,
savers and operators, and over 100 pre-written
ARexx scripts. Features include:
Choice & intermixing of list or button oriented GUI
Faster, to work with
Image rendering on same screen as user interface
Support for FARGO Primera dye sublimation printer
New formats for the optional Pro Conversion Pack
A-Max IV C.olo(o)r
The two most requested improvements to A-Max:
colour and multi-tasking of Mac/ Amiga sessions
Display devices can be several ECS or AGA screens
Uses standard 2.1. Amiga drivers for storage & I/O devices
Accesses Mac SCSI devices through your SCSI controller
Saves ImageWriter 9 and 24-pin output as Amiga IFF
Supports text cut and paste between Clipboard & Finder
Requires min. 68020, System 7.1, 2Mb free RAM, WB 2.1.
Brought to you by accredited dealers of
PO Box 3053 Manuka ACT 2603 Tel (06) 239 6658 Fax 239 6619
BBS now online with Xenolink software (06) 239 6659
38
AMIGA Review
you'll
only copy utility
ever have to buy!
•The fastest and most
powerful disk back-up
system on the Amiga
•Compatible with all
Amiga models
• Easy to use with
complete online help
•Copy, format, check
and compare disks
♦Copy, format and erase
using multiple drives
•Backup your disks to
your hard drive for easy
storage and retrieval
Ca de^s
Manufactured and Distributed in Australia by
Peripheral
World
506 Dorset Road, Croydon, Victoria 3136, Australia
Tel (03) 725 3233 Fax (03) 725 6766
Analyse and Edit tracks
■ Copy to and from RAM
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hard drive
Includes PowerDevice
hardware with passthru
Also includes:
PowerBoof
PowerFont
PowerPic
PowerDocs
PowerMem
Supplied with over 400
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$89. 95
Everything
REAMED AN ,
COULD BE...
PLUS!
THAT YOU EVER DREAMED AN AUDIO SAMPLER
COULD BE...
DIGITAL. SOUND STUDIO
We'll say it loud and clean
If you have an Amigtf, you need DSS8+"!
There's a brand new standard in quality for
8-bit audio on the Amiga: GVP's DSS8+. We've
integrated utterly-unbeatable sound with an impressive collection
of features never before found in any sampler.
Yuu can shop around to your heart's desire, but you won't
find a sampler with de&m sound 01 more faatwes anywheie
at any price — why? Because the PLUS in DSS8+ means that
we took everything you expect in a stereo sampler and added:
• Now over 255 settings for input gain including "Automatic".
(No more time wasted in calibration!]
• Over 127 settings for out new Low Pass Filter. (Noise reduction!)
• Incredibly high Dynamic Range thanks to D5S8+'s DC Offset
Adjustment, (Now hear this!)
• Right and Left channel pre-mix so you save precious RAM.
(No more stereo mix-down!] *
■ Hardware Channel Selector for optimum performance with
all Anrigas. | Power to the People!)
• Separate microphone jack for simultaneous voice-over and
music recording, (Home Video!)
• A solid secure fit onto the Amiga for minimal signal loss. (No
more tiny screwdrivers!)
The PLUS doesn't step there — it also gives
you...
• Our renowned full-featured sample editing and -" '^"*% TW%
music composition software. — * \J V K
A handy
Control
Panel for
indepen-
dent control of DSS8+'s
advanced features, allow
ing full compatibility with
almost any sampler soft-
ware available today.
• The best manual in the
business with an easy-to
follow Digital Sound
Tutorial.
• A second diskette over-
flowing with ready-to-play
Sound Effects!
DSSS- is the essential
audio peripheral for everyone from beginners to digital sound
veterans. In other words, DSS8+ is for anyone interested in a
fun and simple-to-use tool for sound and music. It's perfect for
jazzing up MultiMedia presentations created with Scala™,
Helm™, CanDo™, MediaLifik ", or Amiga Vision".
Take it from yam eats, get the PWS—DSS&*!
Distributed in Australia by
Peripheral
World
ft
506 Dorset Road, Croydon, Victoria 31 3S, Australia.
FJSSS+ te i tradema rk or Great. ValHy Pnxlucti, to^ Ml other tractemarte are the property of iheir respective owners. -
Commodore
AMIGA
CD32
the ULTIMATE
Entertainment Module
$645
A4000
in ALL types ('O40,'03O}
A1200
in any set up
{For example)
33 mhz 030 SCSI 4 meg Fast
RAM 2 chip with monitor $2600
For the BEST PRICES
and TRADE UP deals ring us
and we will HAGGLE.
■ i ■*■■ ii b*i in* u Bin man in* u ■■!■■■■ n
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"Mac" Emulator now nasi
clean 32 bit support
(nearly) PC support !
r„ r
'-I j
$795
12 Gauge 33 or 50 mhz '030
RAM + SCSI from
$999
the ULTIMATE A1200 add on.
DERRINGERS 25 & 50 mhz
accelerator boards with RAM
and co-processors from
$795
For the latest
SHOP 9/2A SURI
Mail order Pd
PHONE (02) 544 1874 FA)
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TBC PLUS
Time Base Corrector with
full 8-bit 4:2:2 CCIR-601
DSP for Broadcast
Quality video output!
$1645
PICCOLO
24 Bit
Graphic Card
The fastest 24-bit graphic
card with a video option
$1195
MONTAGE 24
The latest 24-bit or AGA
video titling & graphics
generator
$495
FAX Filter
Prevents surges and spikes on PHONE and POWER LINES
Prevents damage on expensive
MODEMS and C0MPUT0RS
only
$89
SCALA MULTI MEDIA
MM 311 $579
MM 211 $299
M500 $149
4JMEAL ZIPPER
PEALS NOW !!
m AMIGA technology
ROAD CRONULLA NSW
Box 343 Cronulla 2230
(02)544 1873 or 01 8 862 61 1 a/h
Use our support
BBS (02)5441248
with modems
from Maestro
14400 + fax
$595 with GP fax
INTERLINK
Voidax 14400/fax
$645
jrf^ £ ~"~s
' /-J£~° ^\
3SVP S
|
-*** ■« m, -..^^j
I
\AJLJ^ - /
■BEfe."**' * ^^H
A1 200 SCSI/RAM 4mb
::: ;.\:i
A1 2001 230 40mhz/4mb
$1195
GLock from
$ 899
Digital Sound Studio +
$ 185
IV25-S
$2695
Retina 24 bit
■•$ 845
GForce Combo 40 /4meg
$1295
A500 Impact It /80meg
$ 895
Series II 2000hc8
$ 345
EGS 28/24 Hi res
Graphics board
$1145
A4008 A4000 SCSI
Controller
S 345
A4000 040/33 '040
board for '030 A4000s
S call
es
ng, James Pond,
tales Voyage,
ire $59.95
APPLICATION SOFTWARE
PAGESTREAM 3 $595
MEDIAPOINT $595
DELUXE PAINT 4.5 $125
ADPRO $279
ART Expression $279
IMAGINE 3 $585
VIDEO Director $275
BROADCAST Titter $ 95
IMAGEMASTER RT $185
FINAL WRITER $195
XETEK CD software $ 95
VIDEO
Electronic Design
Sirius Genlocks $1425
YC Genlock $ 775
Pal Genlock $ 575
Video converter S 395
Frames 5
VLab 1200 $ 795
24 BIT CARDS
Opal vision $1295
EGS 1 meg $ 995
EGS 2 meg $1145
Picasso tl retargt $1 095
Plcallo + VID $1195
ACCELERATORS
GVP A1230 4/40 030$1195
CSA 12 Gauge from $ 995
CS A Magnum 040 $1895
CSA Derringer fr S 695
AUDIO
Sunrise 1012 $ 995
Sunrise 516 $2695
GVPDSSfr $ 145
Clarissa 16 bit $ 395
CD ROM DRIVES
Xetec CD Rom drivers $ 145
NEC CDR-74 $ 945
NEC CDR-25 $ 395
MONITORS
1084sXdemo
1942
Multisync fr
$295
$695
$545
A1 200 ADDONS
Ram expansions fr $ 275
030 Accelerators fr $ 890
SCSI controllers f r $ 599
RAM EXPANSIONS
A500 1/2 meg $ 59
A540 1-4 meg exp fr S 245
A600 $ 135
4 meg for A4000 $ 345
MBX 1200 ok ram $ 275
MBX 1200 1 meg $ 345
2 meg chip ram exp $ 299
A2000 8 meg cards
available from $1 45
including SCSI
HARD DRIVES
127 meg $345
1 20 meg for A1 200 S 449 ex
240 meg $ 495
270 Fast SCSI II $ 559
44 Syquest $ 759
88 Syquest $ 899
150 Bernoulli $1350
HARDWARE
Octagon SCSI II
HD controntrolter $ 345
Multiface II multi
serial port $ 245
DKB 4091 controller $ 899
Int FDD $ 169
A1200 Clocks $ 49
LATE FINAL EXTRA 'S
Just a few late arrivals
Anim-workshop $129
Cocoon Morph S 79
High Density Gl FDD's S 279
new tow price on hand
Scanners with OCR $ 369
DIGITAL
BROADCASTER from $5500
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3B51 ? 3888 / 4363 M * |a| .|y|D|T|B|SiP|Q
QukatNat and the Quicknet logo are trademarks owned by Robert McFartane Pty Ltd
AMIGA Is a trademark owned by Commodore-Amiga, Inc. and is used wiih its permission
Yes, it's a bunch of numbers - actually, they're in the
middle of a long postscript file and are actually an
illustration on the page. You'll notice the repetitive
nature of the sequence which makes it ideal for
compression.
had a program to decompress LHARC files. More recent
LHARC compressed files end with .LHA. Older versions
end with LHZ. The latest LHARC can create LHZ files - a
necessary thing for my Mac friend.
Mac people prefer a program called Stuffit. There is no
such compression program on the Amiga. I have given
Mac owners uncompressed Postscript files on a disk and
found they were at a loss as to how to print them. It seems
in Mac land some people are not used to simply copying
files to the parallel port. They seem to think they must be
imported into some application and then printed.
Once you're dealing with the king-size files generated
when you start colour separating stuff, the best way to
move files around is by modem. Compress them with
LHARC. turn off your modem compression and then dial
away. Almost every bureau these days has a modem line
for receiving files ready to be output.
The business end
Make sure you fax an order after sending your file.
Describe clearly how the file should appear when output -
most bureaus can preview your postscript file on screen
before outputting it. They'll do this to check the output
looks right, is not cropped or wrongly configured and so
on. This normally happens on what they call a RIP - Raster
Image Processor, These days a RIP is nothing more than a
fast IBM PC running software which turns your postscript
file back into a giant bitmap image - and we're talking
huge - at resolutions of around 1250-25CX) dot per inch.
This image is then sent by a special high speed connection
to the image setter.
42
AMIGA Review
U U L V.\ M, E D I
Authorised Amiga Dealer Phone Orders:
Visit Our Showroom. /no\ CHQ C71Q
397 ENMORE ROAD \P*-) O I » O f I »
MARRICKVILLE NSW 2204 FAX: (02) 519 7213
SOFTWARE
ENTERTA NMENT
Title
Members Price LRP
A-Train
A-train Const. Set
Abandond Places II
Alien 3
Alien Breed 2
Apocalypse
Armour Geddon II
Ashes Of Empire
B1 7 Flying Fortress
Battle Use '93
BC Kid
Beasilord
Body Blows
Body Blows Galactic
| Brutal Sports Football
I Burning Rubber
Campaign II
Cannon Fodder 1
Captive II
Champ Manager 93
Champ Manager 94
I Champ Manager Italia
H Chaos Engine
1$ Chuck Rock ir
| Civilisation
Combat Air Patrol
Contraptions
Cool Spot
I Darkmere
I Dark Seed
Desert Strike
Dune II
Elite II - Frontier
i Eye of Beholder If
I F1 Racing
F117A Might Hawk
| Flashback
! Global Gladiators
Goal - Kick Otf 2
I Gooch's Cricket
! Gooch 2nd Innings
; Grand Prix
i G unship 2000
Heart of China
Heimdatl II
Hired Guns
Histoiyline
Humans II
64.95
47.9S
S4.95
64.95
74.95
64.95
64.95
84.95
74.95
64.95
64.95
64.95
6495
64.95
64.95
64.95
84.95
47.95
74.95
64.95
64.95
64.95
64,95
64.95
74.95
74.95
64.95
74.95
74,95
74.9S
7/4.95
74.95
74,95
64.95
64.95
84.95
84.95
64.95
74.95
74.95
74.9S
74.95
84.95
84.95
74.95
64.95
74.95
74.95
89.3^
49.95
89,95:
69.9S|
.'U.DS
59.95 '
69.95
89.95
79.95.
GS.S:,!
69,95 1
69.95
6B.9E '
6S35
69.95
69.951
39.95 j
49.95
7S.95
69.95
69.95
69.95
69.95
79.95
79.95 1
69.95
79.95 J
/9.9i>.
79.93
73.95
79.95
79.95
33.95
79. 95 S
B9.95
33. B5
39. 9G'
79.95.
79.35
79.951
89.951
69.95
79.951
59.9:;:
79.95
79.35
: Indiana Jonas Atlantis
Jurassic Park
Legacy
Legend of Valor
Lemmings II
I Lost Vikings
Micro Machines
Mortal Kombat
Patrician
PGA Tour Golf
PGA Tour Data Dsk
Pinball Fantasies
Premiere Manager 2
I Putty
Realms of Arkania
Road Rasb
Rules of Engagem't II
Scrabble Deluxe
I Secret Monkey Is 2
1 Sensible Soccer 93
I Sim Ant
I Sim City
I Sim Earth
I Sim Life
Simon the Sorceror
Solitaire's Journey .
Space Hulk
Slreetfighter II
Syndicate
The Settlers
Tornado
Ultima VI
Wing Commander
Yd I Joel
Zool2
84.95
54.95
64.95
64.95
74,95
74,95
64.95
64.95
74.95
47.95
39,95
74.95
64.95
47.95
74.95
47.95
94,95
64.95
74.95
54.95
84.95
74.96
34.95
84.95
34.95
74.96
74.95
74.96
S-.95
fi.- ij-
S4.95
84.95
39.95
64.95
64.95
89.95-
59.951
69.951
E9.95;
/9.9:,|
79.95 i
69.95 3
H9.HS!
79.95
49.95'
39.95
79.95 1
89.951
49.95
79. 9E,
'19.95 ;
99.95-
59.35
79.S5:
69.S5J
39.9b:"
79,95 3
39,951
69.95?
89.351
ra.gs?
79.95'
79.95 '
89.35 a
is 35 s
89.35
94.35 .-
Bass I
m as I
ANIMATION &
RENDERING
,- . , .
WORD PROCESSING &
DESKTOP PUBLISHING
KEES1
Alien Breed 2
Body Blows Galactic
i Burning Rubber
Chaos Engine
f Civilization
Dennis
Jurassic Park
Morph
Pinball Fantasies
Ryder Cup
Sim Life
Simon the Sorceror
Soccer Kid
Star Trek
Zool
74.95
74.95
64.95
64.95
84.95
64,95
64.95
74.95
74.95
64.95
84,95
84.95
74.95
84.95
64.95
79.951
79.95.
69.95 ;
69.95 '
83. S5
63.95
89.95 .
79.95:
64.95'
G9.9S'
85.95
S3. 55
79.95 1
SS.S-:B
69.951
Aladdin 40 New V3 489.
Animation Wgitehop 89.
:!\l^'-CO
Caligari 24
■ Deluxe Paint V4.1
I Deluxe Paint AGA
Distant Suns V4.2
Essence for Imagine 84.
Essence Imagn Vol2 159.
Imagine V3.0
Interchange Plus V3 1 89
Moiph Plus 269
Morph for Imagine 109,
Pixel 3D Pro + Anim 249,
Playmatlon 389,
Real 3D V2 739,
Scenery Animator 4 89.
Vislonarie 129.
Vista Pro V3.0 94,
.95 499.951
95 99.95!
95 259.95|
SE .!75.95
95 99.951
95 149.951
95 89.951
95 89.953
95 169.95|
SCALL
95 199.951
95 279,951
,95 119.951
95 259.953
95 399.951
95 749.951
,95 99.95?
95 139.95d
.95 99.951
DESKTOP VIDEO &
IMAGE PROCESSING
Art Dep Pro V2.3
Art Dep Pro Control
Art Dep Pro Tools
Art Dep Conversion
Broadcast Titter HR
Deluxe Video 3
Kyperbook
Image FX VI .5
Montage 24
SealaSOO
ScalaMM211
TVPaint2Pro
I Video Direcior
269.95
89,95
209.95
79.95
419.95
94.95
94.95
429.95
485.95
139.95
339.95
5B9.95
169.95
279.35 ■
99.95
219.95E
39,95,
429.95;
33.35
3335
439.95,-
■195.95
149.95 1
399.951
599 35.
199.951
CAD'DRAW NG
ntrocad Cad Plus
Ultra Design Pro
[X-CAD2000
X-CAD3000
39.95 99.951
219.95 229.95 R
339.95 349.95S
689.95 699.951
Idl'M'l^l
B.E.S.T. V3.0
Home Accounts 2
MaxlplanV4
Mini Office
Pro, Calc 2.0
389.95 399.95:'
129.95 139.963
169.95 179.95:
139.95 149.95 1
209.95 219.95"
Art Expression
Final Copy 2
Final Writer
Fontasia 300 Fonts
Kindworis 3
Outline Fonts
PageSetter 3
Pageaream V3.0
Pelican Press
Printmaster Plus
Pro Draw V3.0
Pro Page V4.1
ProTextV5.0
ProWrile V3.3
Soft Faces 1-4 (ea)
TypeSmffii V2.0
WordWurth V2.0
259.95 269.95?
139.95 149,955
209.95 219.95;
79.95 89.951
119.95 129,951
249.95 259,951
99.95 109.951
SCALL
94.95 99.951
89.95 99.961
189.96 199.951
169.95 179.95^
269.95 279.951
94.95 99.951
94.95 99,951
209.95 219.95J
169.95 179.95*
i.TwirM,
Superbase Pers. 4
Superbase Pro. 4
169.95 1 79.96 i
319.95 329.95 f
"
LANGUAGES
Amos Ptd
Amos Pro Compiler
Arexx
Can Do V2.5
Cygnus Ed Pro V3.5
Easy Amos
Hisoft Basic Pro
Hisoft Dei/Pac 3
Hisoft Extend
HiSpeed Pascal
SAS Laufce CS.5
WShel!
159.95 199.951
69.95 79.95*
79.95 89.951
£09.95 219.951
109.95 119.961
34.95 89.951
179.95 1B9.961
119.95 129.95 1
79.95 89.951
18S.95 199.951
JCALL
114.95 119.951
.■»HHI*1
Action Replay 3
Ami Back + Tools
C-Net V3.0 (New)
Cross Dos V5
169.95 '
109.95 "
259.95 i
59.95
Directory Opus 4.1 105.95 '
Disk Master 49.95
GigaMem V3 New 189.95 '
PowefCopy Pro 3 79.95
Quarterback VB (new) 94.95
Quarterback Tools 109.95 '
Synchro Express 3 109.95 '
MUSIC & SOUND
Audio Engineer Jnr 1 79.95 1 39.95
Audio Engineer Plus 329.95 339.96
Bars & Pipes Pro 2 419.95 429.9S
Deluxe Music 2 179.95 139.95
Digital sound studio 169.95 179.95
DrTs Tiger Cub 129.95 139.95
Super J am 1.1 159.95 169.9S
HARDWARE
ACCELERATOR:
RAM EXPANSIONS
A500
j 512k Ram Expansion w/Cfock
! AX-Ram4Mb(0Mb}
i VXL 030 25 Mte Ho FPU 0Mb $3751
VXL03O 25 MlK 68882 FPU $574l
VXL 32M Ram 2Mb Exp. Slit VXL 030 $475|
A600
IMbRamExp. wlCtodt $1191
1 6bit PCMCIA Credit Card Ram 2Mb $279 1
1 (bit PCMCIA Credil Card Ram 4Mb $469 1
A", 200
GVP A12O0 SCSI No FPU 0Mb $519|
GVPA12MSCSI33Mhzw,'FPU4Mi1 $949[
; GVP A1 230 030 66882 *jMtn 4Mb $11751
GVPSerfesllA123Q,'[BOI40MrE'4Mb $10491
; GVP Series II A 1230,ra0;'50MliB'4Mb $14501
GVP SCSI Kit to surt above $2001
' GVP FPU Kit 66632 40Mhi $289 I
' GVP FPU Kit S8882 50Mta ' $Call I
MBX 1 200 Ram Card 6SBJ1 <K $279?
MBX 1200 Ram Card 66881 1Mb $349 I
MBX 1200 Ran Card BSB8! 2Mb $499
MBX 12M Ran Card 68881 4Mb $599 1
A2000
QVPG-F«caO3025Mrlz 68682 1Mb S899J
GVPG-Force03040Mre5BBS24M» $12991
I GVP G-Force 040 33Mhc 4Mb 60ns JGall |
I A4000
DKB3128HarnExpupto12SMt>32bit $749 i
GVP A40C8 HardCard up 10 BMP 1 fflit $349 1
1 Fasllane SCSI 1 1 Expansion Card $995 f
I A5OO/A2000 Chip RAM Expansion
CIi^jEX anb Chip Flam Expansion $299 1
AMIGA CD32
Members Price
REAL 3D NOTICE
The latest version of REAL 3D is the most powerful 3D program
available for desktop computer graphics and animation. It is
stacked with astounding features which provide a sensational level
of realism.
Retail sales and exclusive wholesale distribution of REAL 3D in
Australasia is now being handled by Digipix Pty Ltd of Sydney,
not by Colour Computer Systems of Perth..
The current release version is 2.47, while further upgrades are in
constant development. Version 2.47 sells for $900, and the upgrade
from 2. xx costs $90. Freight is free to anywhere in Australia and
New Zealand. The upgrades are only available from Digipix.
Genuine product support is now available in the form of:
1) A Bulletin Board System with sections for latest news, objects,
all problems ever encountered, hints & tips, minor updates, etc.
This will provide a forum for all users with modems.
2) A Technical Support Line manned by Bruce BrowD, the guru
of REAL 3D in Australia. Bruce is an approved beta tester, and one
of the world's most knowledgable users.
3) A regular Newsletter.
4) Assisting with the formation of local User Groups.
These services will be provided free of charge to registered users.
Details will be posted to all users.
Prospective purchasers of REAL 3D, if buying from a dealer,
should make sure that the product was sourced from CCS or
Digipix, as some unscrupulous dealers obtain the program from
shonky contacts in the USA or elsewhere. Illegally sourced
versions and unregistered users will NOT be eligible for the above
support or upgrades from Digipix, who are the exclusive agents.
By the time this ad is printed, all registered users should have
received a letter from Digipix.
Digipix is an approved dealer for Commodore and OpalVision,
and stock only a very specific range of professional hardware &
software. We specialise in the professional television industry, the
company directors having a total of 34 years of production and
engineering experience in Broadcast Television.
Digipix also has slocks of the brilliant Australian manufactured
single frame controller from Diamond Edit, priced at only $700.
We offer a dubbing, single frame recording and framegabbing
service, to and from most formats, including 1 inch and Betacam
SP.
Pty Ltd
14 Whiting Street, Artarmon, NSW, 2064.
Phone: 02 906 4801 Fax: 02 906 1112
Expect to pay around $15 per sheet of film for an A4
page with crop marks. You won't get a discount until the
number of sheets increases considerably.
For Sydney Amiga owners, there is a new bureau com-
ing on line any day now which is Amiga, PC and Mac
based. Actually, they're running an Amiga 4000 with an
Emplant card to run Mac software. They can accept Amiga
format Syquest cartridges and look set to become a popu-
lar service for Amiga owners. For more information call
Access Graphics on (02) 550 4499.
Layout Rules
There are numerous basic rules on how to cre-
ate good layout. Now you may think that good page
design is simply that which looks good. However,
the purpose of all design is primarily to assist in the
business of communicating information. Departing
from these hard and fast rules runs the risk of
seriously diminishing the effectiveness of a docu-
ment. Only an experienced designer will know how
to fiddle the guidelines in a way that enhances the
end product without decreasing readership com-
prehension.
Each month I will share a few of these rules with
you. If you wish to move ahead at a rapid rate, there
are some excellent books available on the subject.
Upper case is out
Many people place headings, and even body
copy in all upper case. Whilst this can be effective
when used sparingly, it seriously hinders reader-
ship. The simple reason is that people recognise
words by their shape, not by the letters which make
them up. By placing copy in all upper case, words
become less distinguishable and text takes longer
to read - which may frustrate the reader to the point
of giving up,
So, avoid all upper case headings - and totally
abstain from using all upper case in body copy.
On the subject of word shapes, programs which
stretch letters and words into weird and wonderful
shape are very clever - but once again you run the
risk of destroying the basic shape and exacting a
heavy toll on comprehension levels. Pagestream is
especially guilty in this area, as the program allows
text boxes to be reseated with ease. I have many
user group newsletters filled with distorted text.
Avoid this practice and you will have more readers.
ig^HMfmi wqmffMif MMlfF-'- • ■; ■:':, .: <j rmmmi mtsmmmimuimmtim
44
AMIGA Review
Hot PD & Shareware
Fish on
ROM
by Daniel Rutter
Regular readers will be waiting
for another Fish disk update.
They're not gonna get it. Why?
Because Fred Fish hasn't released any
disks above number 930 at the time of
writing. This isn't totally astonishing,
seeing as he's converted over to CD-
ROM as well as floppy disk distribu-
tion and is aiming to have the CDs
come out monthly, which is way
quicker than most big compilations.
Getting one disk out and producing
another, which will be out by the time
you read this, has changed Fred's ap-
proach a bit, 1*11 let the man himself
tell you all about it, in lightly para-
phrased text from his Fishing Report
of January the fifth:
"The initial concept for pricing the
CD-ROMs was to provide two stand-
aid prices, one for orders that were
received prior to production of the
CD-ROM, and one for orders that were
received after. This was to encourage
people to preorder CD-ROMs so that
I could closely match supply with de-
mand.
"Now that I've gone through the
production cycle for two Freshfish CD-
ROMs, I have a much better grasp of
the costs involved. So I have decided
to eliminate this price differential, and
Program Complexity Guide
* Can you find the computer?
** ... in a darkened room?
*** ... In someone else's house?
**** ... and take it away without
them waking up?
use the preorder price (currently
$US19.95 plus shipping and handling)
for all CD-ROMs.
"I still encourage preordering how-
ever, if for no other reason than to
ensure that a disk is available for you.
If you wait until after production, and
I have guessed wrong on matching
supply with demand, you may find
that a disk you are interested in is sold
out and no more production runs are
planned.
"I still think the concept of a CD-
ROM series that is updated on ap-
proximately a monthly basis is good,
and I will work towards reducing the
production cycle to hit the goal of
releases every four to six weeks. For
the next couple of CD-ROMs I will be
satisfied with a six to eight week re-
lease cycle. Naturally, people that have
preordered a certain number of months
of the "monthly CD-ROM" will still
get exactly that many Freshfish CD-
ROMs, it will just take a little bit
longer to get all of them."
Fred goes on to discuss his pro-
jected quarterly CD-ROMs which will
contain all the new stuff from the last
three months for people who don't
want to pay for a new disk twelve
times a year, and the 1000 floppy ar-
chive disks, which will come out
around April, when the libraiy hits
disk 1000 and stops coming out on
floppy disks. Don't get alarmed; your
favourite PD library will still stock all
the Fish CD contents for people who
don't have CD-ROM drives,
This 1000 disk should come in two
versions; a standard disk with every-
thing in archives, and set up for bulle-
tin board use and a two disk set with
nothing archived. Both will cost
SUS19.95, or SUS24.95 including
shipping to Australia. This price is
pretty darn good; even after currency
conversion, you'll be paying a bit less
than you would for a new good qual-
ity IBM shareware CD in a store!
Seeing as there's no new Fish this
month, I've taken advantage of the
shorter break between Companion
Disks and put on some of the groovy
stuff I never had room for before. For
a start, the complete text of the pretty
One ofJanot's pretty pictures
AMIGA Review
45
Hot PD & Shareware
The 3-D picture. It's probably printed loo small
abovemenlioned Fish Report is on the
disk, but you'll also find:
Demos
There was a demo on the last com-
panion disks, and I've included a cou-
ple more this time. These ones are
from The Gathering '93, one of those
European accumulations of young up
and coming computer laient primarily
devoting itself to self-aggrandisement
and copyright infringement. These
boys do know how to code, though,
and these two efforts are from the 40k
Demo Competition.
Entries had to be 40 kilobytes or
less in size, which makes for some
interesting approaches since you can't
use huge sampled instruments or mas-
sive pictures. The first one, Chaos
Land, features (after a worryingly long
startup) some extremely nifty fractal
scaling and plasma effects which are
rather difficult to describe. Essentially,
fuzzy objects that zoom at you and
In tha baglnnlng there was ECZS..
Tlien c^nie ACA...
NOW there is EG:
EGS-28/24 SPECTRUM"
Takes
5i»ecr/?t/A)
YOUR AMIGA'
BEYOND AGA!
The EGS-28/24 SPECTRUM elevates your Amiga
2000, 3000, or 4000 Above and Beyond AGA and
rockets you into the world of powerhouse worksta-
tion resolutions and real-
time 24-bit true-cclor, at a
mere fraction of the cost!
Look at the colors — and fea-
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46
AMIGA Review
Hot PD & Shareware
get pricklier as they get closer, plus
other stuff.
Chaos Land claims to have 150k of
music in it (explaining the very long
startup), but if so then they've got the
least efficient composer in the land.
Methinks it's just a delay to make
them look smarter, since it takes an
age on 68030 as well as 68000. Visu-
ally impressive nonetheless.
The other demo, Lego, is frankly
silly but I had to put it in. A couple of
genuine demo bits and rather a lot of
appalling visual puns and similar stuff-
ing about. Both demos work on WB2
machines with fast processors, as well
as the ubiquitous 68000 driven WB1.3
A500. This was not true of all the
competition demos, by the way, and
many showed the old graphic glitches
on my fast machine. Ah well, it's not
as if they're selling the things.
Janot stands for Just A Neat Old
Thing, and I've included it for three
reasons. One, it's small. Two, it draws
'*fc%
t»t □ | 6 ; :
■&r^m
Tr
Tl r*
T. 1-
□ | Utfttea
|E3|I&
; S_
" ,1
S*r
CI**
""'-fl~aP&
J
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1. «
n«t
.
ij
|g:|a-i
VA
£3
Ywm\ Firfot* (n+*|li*on!
r*4
| g] I IB
'tar,
Oac-rjcn KonttrrJ
r^r
a | Taais_
I a P
ittrfihc Sound
5>
^i!?,
nt»rfS Pw^fr
J J
^
Yes, it's my Workbench again, featuring the new MagicWB icons
Distributed by:
nuns an
S T R
PO. Box 168, Southland Centre, Vie 3192
Tel (03) 583 8806 Fax (03) 585 1074
-[irSrrk 11 .«
if
list, lift MM
*.irs his
J
1
J — £
| fcuitl j
ii"""-": ,T ** r» i,- ■=■:, -i]
):Ud»
The World's First
Totally Usei-Configurable
Directory Utility !
Menus and buttons can be any size,
font, colour, position, function, etc.
Unlimited number of buttons and menus
Instant file type recognition and action
Layout is completely configurable
Fully programmable HotKeys
Keyboard shortcuts for any button,
menu, etc.
Display time, date, memory and even
global variables
Full support of ail screen modes
including AGA
Supports Applcons, Workbench®
Tools menu and ARexx
View and print pictures and text
Run multiple configurations at once
Play sound samples and
Sound/ProTracker modules
Full diskcopy functions and system
information
Works on all AMJGA®s, even with
only 5 12k RAM
Fully featured configuration editor
And more ...
Hot I'D & Shareware
pretty patterns (and that's ALL it
does). Three, its documentation is
amusing. Enjoy.
ADProRunner **
Art Department Professional is an
excellent commercial image process-
ing package. Unfortunately, by default
it gloms vast amounts of your memory
when you run it. It basically says to
the system "What've you got? OK,
that'll do. Now nick off."
You can fiddle with the icon
tooltypes to change the memory us-
age, but what if you want to set a
different amount every time? This is
where ADProRunner comes in. It's a
CanDo application that you run in-
stead of ADPro. Set the memory you
want on a slider, click a button and
ADProRunner kicks of ADPro with
the right settings. An Installer script
is included to get the program set up,
and for once I had enough room to
include the Installer utility with it.
CxKiller
Commodities are great things. You
can use them under Workbench ver-
sions from 2 up, and they provide a
simple, manageable format for all sorts
of utility programs, marshalled by the
Commodity Exchange. But what if
you're running a script, for example,
and want it to kill a commodity?
If the commodity's got an ARexx
port you can probably do it that way,
but most don't. Enter CxKiller. Give
it the name of a commodity and it
terminates it. Or feed it several names
and watch them all die screaming. If
you don't give it any, it shuts down
every running commodity - a positive
bloodbath.
It's not real smart about it, though.
Some commodities patch system func-
tions that get very upset if the patcher
suddenly vanishes, and so killing them
can cause your system to abruptly en-
ter Cabbage Mode - so be careful.
And, of course, CxKiller requires
Workbench 2. Dun.
MagicWB1.2p
I last mentioned MagicWB five
months ago; it's a SUS20 shareware
collection created by Martin
Huttenloher, which contains scads of
exceedingly nifty dithered eight col-
our icons and backdrops and a flaw-
less installer that perfectly patches
your existing icons without stomping
their positions or tooltypes. It's now
been updated to vl.2p, with a lot of
new icons and some changed back-
grounds for an even better look.
MagicWB still has its old problem
- it's designed for flicker- free ma-
chines. If you use it on a medium-res
display, as used by most Amigans,
everything looks twice as tall as it
should be. MagicWB provided the last
ten per cent of encouragement to me
last year when I set off to buy my
flicker fixer. So be warned - seeing
this delectable little piece of eye candy
can lead to spending hundreds of dol-
lars on a card and a new monitor!
You also still need WB2 to use
MagicWB. If you haven't got it, up-
grade. Now. how many times do I
have to tell you? Sheesh.
MagicWB is too big to put on the
Companion Disk, but it's available
separately from Prime Artifax.
Postcodes *
Have you got one of those little
booklets with about a trillion place
names and their postcodes? Ever tried
to look up which places have a given
postcode? Impossible.
Not any more. The Companion Disk
contains a text file with 13,720 Aus-
tralian locations and their postcodes.
It's actually small enough to use on
even a 512k Amiga.
The interesting thing about this file
is that it perfectly demonstrates the
principle behind those CD-ROM based
telephone books that let you look up
names from numbers. People have got
very agitated about the privacy issues
of this sort of thing - at the ACAR
office we had a demo of a product
that would let you find out who lived
on a given side of a given street,
within, say, five kilometres of a given
place and with a certain combination
of letters in their name and a phone
number ending in 4. This is impres-
sive stuff, and it's what the informa-
tion revolution is really about.
Enough cyberpunk waffling - let's
play some tunes,
ElektrikFunk
This is a rather good SoundTracker
module - a song file including note
data and instruments, and needing only
a player to work. I've included an old
version of IntuiTracker to play the
MOD; the interface stuffs up a little
on WB2 but it still plays all right,
ElektrikFunk is one of the new
wave of REALLY good sounding
SoundTracker MODs, replacing the
old guard of tedious synthesised demo
tunes and scratchy, boring monster-
sample pieces. It actually sounds re-
markably like a rather good jam ses-
sion, needing only a lead vocal to
make it complete. Andrew Parrel Fs
efforts in this field were, of course,
magnificent. I know which side my
bread's buttered, readers.
S1RDS
Single Image Random Dot
Stereograms, or SIRDS, are pictures
cunningly constructed so that if you
carefully misfocus your eyes on them
you suddenly see a very realistic three
dimensional image, with no fancy
glasses, mirrors, polarisers or drugs
needed. For this reason, they're
enjoying considerable popularity and
their vendors are making large dollars.
On the companion disk you'll find
a picture of this type - it's not really a
true SIRDS but it uses the same prin-
ciple, the Illusion pic isn't really "of
anything much - just some rather
alarming corrugations. For the proper
result, look at it with your eyes lined
up on something distant but focused
on the screen (yes, I know it's tricky).
For a simpler version, go crosseyed
until the images line up and then
refocus - this gives you a reversed
version. If you can't do it, find a kid
to teach you. They're everywhere.
By the time the next column rolls
around I should have a load more Fish
disks to play with, so Til be back to
the old schedule.
The Companion Disks are avail-
able from Prime Artifax (02) 879 7455.
48
AMIGA Review
CanDo Column
Make Your
Own
a
Typing Tutor
by Greg Abernethy
This month we will be design-
ing a Typing Tutor. It is very
basic, but is designed mainly
to demonstrate how the KEY INPUT
OBJECT can be used to create an ap-
plication.
The Typing Tutor revolves around
getting keyboard input and acting on
the key pressed. It is necessary to
screen what key has been pressed, due
to the way that CanDo interprets the
key string. I explained the problem in
the December 1993 tutorial. In short,
some keys return a string, e.g. press-
ing the SPACE BAR returns a
"SPACE" string. Also, all letters are
UPPERCASE, so it is necessary to
check if CAPSLOCK is down or the
SHIFT key is pressed.
The program will consist of one
card with a document for displaying a
choice of lessons, some fields for dis-
playing the current lesson, time taken
and accuracy. A keyboard of the rel-
evant keys is displayed on screen, as
well as a box for displaying the letters
to type. The current letter to type will
be underlined in the box. When a key
is pressed, the corresponding key on
the keyboard will be highlighted. Ji
the key matches the current letter, the
next letter will be underlined. Once
the end of the line is reached, a new
set of letters will be displayed.
1 have created TEN lessons, start-
ing with "ASDFG" and working
through to all the main keys on the
keyboard.
PLEASE NOTE: This program re-
quires the font "Diamond 20". Please
ensure you have it in your fonts direc-
tory.
Creating the Typing Tutor
WINDOW SPECIFICATIONS
WINDOW TITLE "CanDo Typing Tutor...."
WINDOW SIZE X = 640; Y = 256 4 COLOURS
VISIBLE BORDERS
ALWAYS OPEN ON OWN SCREEN
WINDOW BACK/FRONT GADGET:W!NDOW
DRAG QADGET
gmCTPWiiatBEi
BEFOREATTACHMENT SCRIPT .
Dispose Lesson
Let Lesson[1] = "ASDFG'tet Lesson[2] = "HJKL;"
Let Lesson[3] = "QWERT"
LetLesson[4J = *YUIOP"
LetLessoni^VXCVB"
Let Lesson[6) = "MM„f
Let Lesson[7] = Lesson[1]IILesson[2]
Let Lesson[8] = Lesson[3]IILesson[4]
Let Lesson [9] = Lessdn[5]IILesson[6]
Let Lesson[10] = Lesson[8]IILesson[7]l[Lesson[9]
Explanation:
This script creates the lesson data.
Each lesson is set up in the database
as a string. This database is all that is
required for creating the ten lessons.
AFTERATTACHMENT SCRIPT
WorkWrth Document "Lessons"
Clear DOCUMENT
Letx =
Loop
Let x = x + 1
Type "LESSON "Wxir:"lllLesson[x],NEWLlNE
Until x = 9
Type "LESSON 10: ALL The Keys'.NEWUNE
Delete CHARACTER ,-1
MoveCursorTo STARTOF DOCUMENT
DrawBorder 170,14,30Q,26 r DOUBLEBEVEL ,2,1
DrawBorder 15,45,610,1 10 ; DOUBLEBEVEL ,2,1
Dispose Pos
Let x =
Let xi = 26
Let yl = 50
SetPen 1
SetPrintFont "diamond",20
.Loop
m
Q
tU
F
R
T
V
W
1
P.
s
D
F
6
H
J
K
L
*
1
H
C
M
B
N
M
/
\
/
Cur-rent Lessen : 1
Begin LESSOH |
End LESSflft |
teavg fr-o gran I
Tine
Accuracy £
"•MY
LESSOH 3:
LESSON 51
LIS SOU i\
LESSOH 7:
LESSOH 8:
imm 9;
LESSOH 18:
HJKL;
0HERT
YUI0P
mm
■RS6FGMJKL:
{WERTYUI0f>
ZJOBMW
ALL The Keys
AMIGA Review
49
CanDo Column
Ok
| Caticei | Card; "Type" Event: "fifterfittachnent
HorkHithDocwient "Lessons"
Hear DOCUMENT
Lei x = 8
Loop
Let x = x + 1
Type "LESSON "1 1 lxli";"l I ILessonExI^EMLIME
Until x = 9
Type "LESSON 10; ALL The Keys\NEHLINE
Delete CrlflRnCTER ,-1
HoveCursorTo STRRTGF DOCUMENT
■II
s: i i
RfterfltUchinent Script Editor
Let x = x+ 1
DrawBorder x1,y1,50 r 30,OOUBLEBEVEL ,2,1
PlntTextGetChars(LessoriI10],x,1) l x1 +5,y1 +3
Let Pos[x].x = x1
Let PosjxJ.y = y1
Letxl =x1 +60
If X1 = 625
Let x1 = 25
Let y1 = y1 + 35
Endlf
Until x = 30
Dispose Under
Let x =
Letxl =180
Loop
Let x = x + 1
Le! Under[x].x = x1
Letxl =x1 f30
Until x = 10
Lei Current = 1
SetText "CL", "Current Lesson:"|||Current
Let Begin =
OetachObject "Which Key"
DetachObject "Time"
SetPrintFont "topaz" ,3
SetPen 1
PrintTextTime',239,183
PrinfText "Accuracy',239,203
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50
AMIGA Review
CanDo Column
Explanation:
This script dispays the lessons in a
LIST document, and draws the key-
board and letter display box on the
screen. I use the string from Les-
son [10] for displaying the keyboard
letters using the DIAMOND 20 font.
The Pos variable holds the location
for each key, so that the key can be
highlighted on screen when it is
pressed. The Under variable holds the
location for each letter in the display
box, so that the underline can be eas-
ily moved along underneath each let-
ter. The Key Input Object is detached
to avoid any problems with the user
pressing a key before starting a les-
son. The Time Display Object is de-
tached, ready to be used after the user
has pressed the first key in the lesson.
Lesson Display Document
Specifications
OBJECT NAME "LessonDoc"
Keylnput Object Editor
Nane UtfnchKeii
Qualifier HONE |
Key Code |HY
Sanple Keys
Computer Adventure
Games - Hints and Tips
The Second Adventurers Realm Hint Book
Detailed clues to over 25 adventure and
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Need help? Want to know how to solve
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POST, FAX OR PHONE YOUR ORDER
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Please send me Computer Adventure Games - Hints
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I enclose a cheque or money order for $10 □
OR Please charge my
Bankcard □ Visa card □ Mastercard □
Card No:
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Or Send the coupon to:
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Amiga Model Ram
AMIGA Review
51
CanDo Column
DOCUMENT NAME "Lessons"
ORIGIN X = 411: Y = 167
SIZE X = 214: Y = 80
BORDER = DOUBLEBEVEL
LIST DOCUMENT
Release Script
Let Current = TheLineNumber
SetText "CL" ."Current Lesson:"IIICurrent
Explanation:
When the user selects a lesson from
the list, the Current variable is set to
the selected lesson and the lesson
number is displayed in the field.
Information Fields
Specifications
The Fields for displaying informa-
tion are;
Current Lessor Field
FIELD NAME "CL"
ORIGIN Horiz = 142 : Vert = 167 : Width = 256
TEXT 32 Characters
BORDER = DOUBLEBEVEL : CENTRE JUSTIFI-
CATION
Time Display Field
FIELDNAME "Clock"
ORIGIN Horiz = 313 : Vert = 183 : Width = BO
TEXT 10 Characters
BORDER = DOUBLEBEVEL : CENTRE JUSTIFI-
CATION
Accuracy Field
FIELD NAME "Accuracy*
ORIGIN Horiz = 313 : Vert = 203 : Width = 80
TEXT 10 Characters
BORDER = DOUBLEBEVEL : CENTRE JUSTIFI-
CATION
Specifications for Typing Tutor
Buttons
BEGIN LESSON Button
BUTTON NAME "Begin"
Next month our CanDo
column will be moving to
a shorter, punchier format.
The bulk of the program
normally listed will be |
instead be available on
BBSs and directly from
Greg Abernethy,
^ mmmU mm B maimmmm
ORIGIN Horiz=15:Vert = 182
BORDER = SHADOW : HIGHLIGHT = COMPLE-
MENT
TEXT= " Begin LESSON "
Release Script
Do "ShowLetters"
ReattachObiect "WhichKey"
Explanation:
This script sets up the lesson and
reattaches the key input object to en-
able keyboard input to be monitored.
END LESSON Button
BUTTON NAME "End"
ORIGIN Horiz = 15: Vert = 202
BORDER = SHADOW :
HIGHLIGHT = COMPLEMENT
TEXT = " End LESSON "
Release Script
If Begin = 1
DetachObject Time"
DetachObject "WhichKey"
Let Begin =
Endlf
Explanation:
This script is only performed if a
lesson is currently in progress. It de-
taches the key input object and the
timer object.
LEAVE LESSON Button
BUTTON NAME "Go"
ORIGIN Horiz = 11: Vert = 222
BORDER = SHADOW :
HIGHLIGHT = COMPLEMENT
TEXT = " Leave Program "
Release Script
Quit
Key Input Object Specifications
NAME : "WhichKey"
QUALIFIERS: NONE
KEY CODE :ANY
Release Script
If Begin =
Let Begin = 1
Let Correct =
Let Attempts =
Let Time =
Let Accuracy =
SetText "Clock" Jime
ReattachObject 'Time"
Endlf
Le!Key=KeyPressed
If NumberOfChars(Key) > 1
Let f = FindWordfSEMICOLON
*CO MM A*PERI0D'SLASH'*,Key,1 ,"*")
[ff>0
If 1 = 1
LetKey = ";'
Elsalf f = 2
Let Key = ","
EJselff=3
LetKey = "."
Elsetf f = 4
Let Key = T
Endlf
Endlf
Endlf
If NumberOfChars(Key) = 1
Let Attempts = Attempts + 1
Let f = FindChars(Lesson[10],Key,1)
If f> q
SetDrawMode COMPLEMENT
AreaRectanglePos[f].x,Pos[f].y,50,30
Delay 0,0,10
AreaReclanglePos[f].x,Pos[f].y,S0,30
SetDrawMode NORMAL
II Key = GetChars(Leiters,un,1)
Let Correct = Correct +1
Let un = un + 1
If un > 10
Do "ShowLetters"
Else
SetPen
AreaRectangle Under[un - 1].x,35,20,2
SetPen 1
Area Rectan gle Under[u n] .x, 35,20, 2
Endlf
Endlf
Endlf
Let Accuracy = (Correct/Attempts) * 100
SetText "Accuracy'.FormatValue (Accu-
racy,"#so.oo')ir%"
Endlf
Explanation:
This script handles the monitoring
of all keys pressed by the user. Firstly,
if this is the first time a key has been
pressed in the lesson, the variables for
time, correctness, accuracy and
number of attempts are reset to zero.
If the number of letters in the Key
string are greater than one it is neces-
sary to check to see if the COMMA,
PERIOD, SLASH or SEMICOLON
keys were pressed. If they were, the
Key string is changed to the appropri-
ate character. If the letter is in the
valid range of letters from all the les-
sons, I then check to see if it matches
the currently underlined letter in the
display box. If it does, the underline
is moved to the next letter, or another
selection of letters is displayed if the
end of the line was reached. The at-
tempts and correct variables are
incremented, if necessary, and then
the Accuracy variable is calculated,
formatted and displayed. The
52
AMIGA Review
CanDo Column
FormatValue command is very good
for setting up correct display charac-
teristics for numbers and strings.
See the CanDo manual for a full
rundown on how to use this command.
It is too involved to discuss in this
tutorial.
Timer Object Specifications
NAME : "Time"
INTERVAL : RECURRING : 1 SECOND
Occurred Script
Let Time = Time + 1
Let m = FormatValueg[me%60,"#»"ll"m")
Lats= (Time MOD 60)ll"s"
SelText "Clock*,mllls
Explanation:
When the Timer is attached, it up-
dates and displays the time elapsed,
from the first key press, in the "Clock"
field. Once again, the display is cal-
culated and formatted before being
displayed. In this way, minutes and
seconds can be displayed.
Global ftoutine"ShowLetfers"
Script
SetPen
Area Rectangle 171 ,14,299,26
SetPen 1
SetPrintForit"diamond",20
Let n = NumberOfChars(L9SSon[Current])
Let Letters = ™
Letx =
Loop
Lei x = x + 1
Let p = GetChars[Lesson[Currentj,Random
(1,n),1)
PrintTextp,Urider(xj,x,16
Let Letters = Lettersllp
Until x = 10
Let un = 1
SetPen 1
AreaRectangfe Under[Ln].x,35 1 20 I 2
Explanation:
This routine displays a random se-
lection of letters from the current les-
son in the Letter Display Box and
then the first letter is underlined.
Final words
The Typing Tutor could have many
enhancements added, but once again
demonstrates how quickly and easily
a worthwhile application can be de-
veloped using CanDo.
One enhancement would be to be
able to do lessons by loading a text file
containing sentences or a story using
certain combinations of letters. If any-
body does this, I would be very inter-
ested in seeing the finished product.
Do you ever wish you could insert
a disk and then be able to quickly
view all directories and files on the
disk, without the need to use Direc-
tory Opus or the Shell to search
through the disk? Next month, I hope
to have a Disk Displayer program
where you can select the floppy drive
with the disk to view, and the pro-
gram will display all directories and
files on the disk in documents, You
can then scroll through the lists to
find the file you need. You will also
be able to print any or all file lists
from the current disk.
Until next month, have fun with
the Typing Tutor. Q
PRIMERA PRINTER
NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE AMIGA
High resolution thermal transfer colour printing
Primera's colour is brighter, richer, sharper and more
Vibrant than other printing technologies
Prints up to four times faster than ink jet
Priced at just $1995 ex tax
{10% discount for AGAR readers)
UMAX
SCANNER SOLUTIONS FOR AMIGA
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Call for prices
SOFTWARE
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135 missions to complete. Price $59.95
CROSS STITCH. Converts any IFF picture into printed cross
stitch pattern. Price $45.00
Dealer interest welcome
Full range of DEJA VU & CLR Titles available
3 disk p.d. catalogue only $4.00
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PHONE: (03) 326 0133 FAX: (03) 370 8352
What do we have?
SOFTWARE - PRODUCTIVITY AND GAMES
ALL DISCOUNTED BETWEEN 10 & 70%
ACCESSORIES - HAND SCANNERS - COLOUR & GRAY SCALE
WITH OR WITHOUT OCR, MOUSE - LARGE RANGE OF OPTICAL
OR OPTO MECHANICAL, RAM AND PROCESSOR EXPANSIONS,
HARD DRIVES, FLOPPY DRIVES, AND OF COURSE AMIGAS.
GENLOCKS, AUDIO AND VIDEO D1QITISERS, AND MUCH MORE.
ALL WITH COMPETITIVE PRICES, AUSTRALIAN
WARRANTY, AND TOP LEVEL SERVICE.
NEW PRODUCTS
(NOW AVAILABLE OR DUE SHORTLY)
DKB4091 • SCSI 2 CONTROLLER WAS CBM 4091
DKB 3128 - UP TO 1 28 MB RAM FOR A30QQ/4000
VIDI1 2 & 24 RT - GRAB FROM MOVING VIDEO
VID1 1 2SV - AUDIO AND VIDEO DIGITISING IN 1 UNIT
MIGRAPH COLOURBURST - COLOUR HAND SCANNER
MIGRAPH FLATBED COLOUR SCANNER - 1 200 X1200
MIGRAPH SCAN TRAY + MERGE IT SOFTWARE
GOLDEN IMAGE - AMIGA HIGH DENS EXT. FLOPPY DRIVE
DKB -68030 + RAM + CO-PRO + SCSI 2 FOR A 1200
GOLDEN IMAGE - A500 512K RAM CARDS
GOLDEN IMAGE - A600 1MB RAM CARDS
AMIGA Review
53
Blitz 'em Basic
Data
Security
Hello and welcome once again to the monthly Blitz
2 column, where we try to give you some useful
ideas, and some code to use in your own Blitz
creations.
This month we are going to look at data security, and
how to protect your graphics, data or text from unauthor-
ised eyes. While there is always a way to defeat almost any
security system, our method will provide a high level of
protection, for just a few hundred bytes of code.
"Why the need for data security?" I hear you ask! There
are many reasons for wanting to protect your precious
data, from an amateur not wanting his pictures hacked, to a
PD programmer not wanting someone else stealing the
glory for his hard-earned code, to a host of personal secu-
rity reasons.
This month's useful add-on to the Blitz 2 command set
is an encryption statement. The statement will jumble up
the contents of a block of memory, using a unique key
string. The data can be restored to its original condition by
calling the statement once again and placing a minus sign
in front of the keyword string, similar to the method em-
ployed by Directory Opus. So there is only one statement,
which is used to encrypt or unencrypt your data.
Encryption
The method used is to store your images, text or other
data as encrypted data on the disk or in memory, and only
unencrypt it at run time, using a carefully concealed key-
word string. This will prevent your IFF masterpieces being
plundered, your unbelievable samples being misused and
your games secrets revealed by that devious and frustrated
gamer with an attitude and a hex editor...
Methods to conceal your keyword string are left to your
own imagination, but methods devised so far include strings
stored backwards, strings made up out of every second or
fifth letter and strings made up out of certain filenames
within the program's directory! That'll stop 'em renaming
your masterpiece as well!
The reason that this has been written as a statement,
rather than a function is that there really is no value to be
returned. Provided that you check that the memory block
and keystring are valid, there is no opportunity for error.
After the statement has returned, it's safe to assume the
data has been processed. Here's the source code for the
encryption routine:
; Encrypts or unencrypts the designated memory block
; using the supplied key. -[key$] unencrypts
Statement CRYPT {start, length, key$}
1 f Le.ft$(key S, 1 )="-" ; determine which function is required
direction =2
key$=llnRight$(key$,1 ) ; strip off minus sign and set direction
Else
direction^
End If
key$=Lett$(key$,40) ; trim key string to 40 characters
Poke.s ?ancrypt_key,key$ ; poke it into memory
; load passed parameters into registers
GetReg dO.start
GeiReg d1 .length
GetReg d2,?encrypt_key
GeiReg d4, direction
GetReg d5,Len(key$|
MOVE. I dO.aO ; load data pointer into address reg
MOVE. I d2,a1 ; load keystring pointer into address reg 1
MOVEQ #0,d3 ; clear the keystring pointer
CMP.b #2,d4 ; check to see if it's an encryption or unencryption
BEQ wiencrypijoop ; jump to unencrypt
encryptjoop:
MOVED (aOJ.dO
ADD.b 0(a1,d3J,dO
MOVE.b dO,(aO>
ADDQ.b #1,d3
CMP.b d5,d3
BNE encryptjoopt
; load data byte into dO
; add keystring + its pointer to data byte
, ; replace rotted data byte
; increment keystring pointer
check to see if it's at the end
54
AMIGA Review
Blitz 'em Basic
MOVEQ #0,d3
SUBQ.I #1,d1
BNE encryptjoop
Statement Return
; reset It if it isencryptjoopl:
; decrement bytes left to do
; do next byte or exit if no bytes left
unencryptjoop:
MOVE.b (aO),dO
SUB.b 0(a1,d3),d0
MOVE,b dO,(aO)+
ADDQ.b #1,d3
CMP.b d5,d3
BNE unencryptjoopl
MOVEQ #0,d3
unencryptjoopl:
SUBO.t #1,d1 ; decrement bytes left to do
BNE unencryptjoop ; do next byte or exit if no bytes left
; load data byte into do
; sub keystring + its pointer from data byte
; replace restored data byte
; increment Keystring pointer
check to see if it's at the end
; reset it if it is
Statement Return
encrypt_key: Ds.b
End Statement
50
Here's how to produce a CO utility built around our
encryption statement. Blitz will compile this source code
into ten kilobytes of turbo-charged 68000 code, which
could be hooked up to Directory Opus to encrypt files with
a few mouse clicks!
Try creating a system friendly 10K CIA utility like this
in AMOS... With a bit of parameter and error checking the
code looks like this;
DEFTYPE.I
IMCDIR "dhO:Blfefticludes/"
INCLUDE BLOAD.Fun
INCLUDE BSAVE.Fun
INCLUDE EXIST.Fun
INCLUDE CRYPT .Stat
version$="WER: Crypt 1 .0 By RatByte Software"
p. b=N urn Pars ; The n urn ber of param eters the u se r enie red f rom the CLI
lfp=l
lfPar$(1)="?"Thenp=0
End If
If p<>2 ; incorrect parameters, print usage information
a$=Chn$[27)+"[33m"
bS=Crir${27)+"[>0m"+Chrt(27)+"E31;40nn"
NPrint "" : NPrint a$,Rightt(version$,30),b$
NPrint"" NPrint "USAGE:"
NPrint " To Encrypt: Crypt [filename] [Key] "
NPrint " To Decrypt: Crypt [filename] [-Key] ":
NPrint ""
Else
f$=Par$(l) ; the first parameter is trio filename
key$=Par$(2) ; the second is the key string
If EXIST {»)
resuit=8LOAD (ft) ; load the file,
If result
CRYPT {FADDRESS t FLENGTH.key$( ; encrypt it!
r=BSAVE {f$,FADDRESS,FLENGTH] ; Save it out again.
FreeMem_ FADDRESS.FLENGTH ; clean up our
memory
Else
NPrint "Can't Load *,f$
End If
Else NPrint "Can't Open ",f$
End If
End If
End
That's aJl for this month, I hope you are finding this
column useful. Thanks to all the people who give me
feedback and suggestions and don't forget you can contact
me via Powerhouse BBS (042) 616380/622170 or by writ-
ing to me at Box 1420 Woliongong 2500. For all those
people that have sent me their Blitz PD creations, thanks
very much, but we need more!
Happy Coding! □
Disk Relabel and MakeDIRA useful routine to
enable you to relabel a disk from within the Blitz
environment:
Function RELABEL { drive$ , newname$ }
If Relabel_(drive$ , toewname$)
Function Return True
Else
Function Return False
End If
End Function
; Example usage
If RELABEL { "DF1 : " , "RAT : " ]
NPrint "Relabel done ok!"
Else
NPrint "Error attempting Relabel ! "
End If
MouseWait
This function returns a true or false value to en-
able you to check for success or failure of the opera-
tion. Creating adirectory on a disk is almost as easy:
Function MAKEDIR {dirname$}
lock=CreateDir_ (&dirname$)
If lock>0
UnLock_ lock
Function Return True
Else
Function Return False
End If
End Function
; Example usage
If MAKEDIR {"ram :mys tuff"}
NPrint "Directory created ok!"
Else
NPrint "Couldn't make directory!"
End If
MouseWait
AMIGA Review
55
The G 64 Column.-
New Life
in Asia
by Owen James
Anew lease of life looks to have
been breathed into the C64,
thanks largely to its continu-
ing popularity in Asian markets. Un-
official word is that a company by the
name of Silicon Holdings is now
manufacturing the C64 specifically for
this market, and packaging it with sev-
eral business applications. It's still not
likely that we'll see a re-emergence
of new C64s in Australia.
Another rising from the dead, this
time thanks to CMD. The still popular
GEOS range for the C64, which was
recently dropped by Geo Works so they
could concentrate on GEOS for the
PC. is now being produced and mar-
keted by CMD in the United States.
Word is that the resurrection will in-
clude all of the GEOS titles ever pro-
duced by Geo Works/Berkley, includ-
ing the GEOS 128 range. No word yet
on when it will be available in Aus-
tralia again, but it won't be distrib-
uted through ComputerMate, the pre-
vious Australian GEOS distributors.
Watch this space.
Yet another PD Library
Yet another new C64 public do-
main library has been launched in Aus-
tralia. Alternative Software carries ap-
proximately 200 disks spread amongst
nineteen categories, including Educa-
tion, Games, Geos, Demos, Sound and
Music, and Utilities. Price per disk is
$4.00, and postage is free.
A disk catalogue is available, which
is updated every second month. To
obtain the disk, send a cheque or
money order for $3.00 to Alternative
Software, RMB 221 Sunraysia High-
way, Stuart Mill Vic 3478, Alterna-
tive Software also carries many sec-
ond-hand software titles in cassette,
disk and cartridge formats. A list of
these may be obtained by sending a
stamped, self-addressed envelope to
the address above.
Daniel Martin has produced a com-
pilation disk of programs he has writ-
ten in assembly language, as well as
some of the more useful public do-
main utilities available. Included are
utilities for 'liberating' music and
graphics from other programs, con-
verting between various graphics for-
mats, picture editors, and, Daniel
claims, a program which apparently
kills a C64 virus. Also included are a
variety of PD games.
The cost of the compilation disk is
$ 1 0.00, and may be purchased by send-
ing a cheque or money order to Dan-
iel Martin, PO Box 1735, Ballarat Mail
Centre, VIC 3354. Thanks to Daniel
for forwarding the information.
Mail group
A new mail-based user group has
been formed with the title of The Right
Direction. The Right Direction was
formed after the demise of CompuPal,
another mail-based group. Members
are kept in touch through a bi-monthly
disk magazine, and are also entitled
to a free disk filled with public do-
main software.
For membership details, contact
The Right Direction's Shane Boswell
by telephoning (054) 421 462, or by
writing to 102 Forest St, Bendigo Vic
3550.
New PD games
C64/128 Public Domain Software
(SA) has several games available that
are written by an Australian program-
mer. The first, Hyperspace, is a fast
action horizontal scrolling space shoot
'em up. There are a total of four plan-
ets to conquer, and there are two parts
to each planet. Winning is not easy,
but there is thankfully a trainer mode
for novice users.
The object of Jewel Chest should
be familiar to anyone who has played
Tetris in the past. The difference is
that the falling shapes consist of col-
oured squares, diamonds and circles,
and this version has quite a catchy
tune. It was originally an Amiga game,
but has been converted to the C64.
Also in this disk collection is a
three dimensional demonstration,
showing various wire-frame objects
on a horizontally scrolling star field.
It won't be anything new to anybody
familiar with demonstrations, but it's
certainly worth a look.
The disk is available for $10, which
includes postage as well as the
shareware donation to the author. For
your copy, send a cheque or money
order to C64/128 Public Domain Soft-
ware (SA), Box 146 GPO, Adelaide
SA 5001.
Also available from C64/128 PD
are two disks containing GEOS
geoPaint files of Dinosaurs. These can
be used in geoPaint, geoWrite and
geoPublish, and with the recent dino-
saur frenzy, should be quite popular.
GEOS Dinosaur World 1 & 2 are
priced at $10 each if purchased sepa-
rately, or $18 for both.
Thanks to Jeffrey Carey of C64/
128 Public Domain for providing the
information.
56
AMIGA Review
MAIL
Where to find peripherals?
Andrew White of Surry Hills NSW
writes:
"Dear Owen, 1 have recently pur-
chased a Commodore 128 computer. I
would be grateful if you could help me
with the names and addresses of places
where I could purchase a parallel printer
interface and suitable cable, and any
other accessories such as RAM expan-
sion modules, modems, etc.
"At present I have only a mono
monitor and any information regard-
ing a suitable colour monitor would
be gratefully appreciated. I have just
started reading Commodore and Amiga
Review and I find your column excel-
lent in helping me 'boot* off into this
exciting new field."
OJ: Finding products and accesso-
ries for the C64/I28 is difficult to say
the least. There is still a small handful
of retailers supporting these machines,
but they are few and far between. As a
first point, you may like to try finding
items second-hand. There are plenty
of bargains available, largely because
so many users are upgrading to the
Amiga and are generally willing to let
their old equipment go very reason-
ably. Try the chain of Cash Convert-
ers, or scan your local classified news-
paper.
For a parallel printer interface try
calling Code One Computer Services
on (047) 57 3982, or by writing to PO
Box 192, Katoomba NSW 2780.
Again, monitors are very difficult to
get hold of new, although some retail-
ers do have old stocks. The 128 can
be used with many types of monitors,
such as Commodore's 1901 or 1081
models. There are plenty of these
available second hand, so shop around
and find one in good condition.
File handling
Frank Bunton, Secretary of the
Commodore Hornsby User Group Inc.,
writes:
"Dear Owen, May I take the liberty
of commenting on two of the items
that you included in your column in
January?
"The first relates to the use of SYS
6551 1 to close all open files. The prob-
lem is that it closes all files with re-
spect to the computer, but a device
such as a disk drive or printer will
still think the file is open. Thus, data
stored in the device's buffer may be
lost for good.
"If the device is the disk drive and
the program has been writing to a se-
quential file then you will end up with
a SPLAT file. To prove a point," enter
and run this:
1 00 OPEN 3,8,3 ,"TEST FILE,S,W"
110FORX= 1TO 100
120 PRINT#3, "TEST STRING"
130 SYS 65511
140 PRINT#3,"TEST STRING"
"When the program reaches line
140 your screen should give an error
message to the effect that the file is
not open, thus showing that the com-
puter considers that the file has been
closed.
"However, look at your disk drive
activity light. It is still ON showing
that the disk file is still open. List the
disk directory and the file name should
show an asterisk next to SEQ, which
indicates an unclosed file. There is no
substitute for correctly closing all files
with the CLOSE command."
OJ: Thanks to Frank for that infor-
mation. That System call was not in-
tended for general use as a replace-
ment for the CLOSE command, and
that warning should have been in-
cluded. However, it has proven itself
to be useful when debugging a pro-
gram that has opened many files. In
other circumstances it can cause prob-
lems.
Users wishing to contact Commo-
dore Hornsby User Group (otherwise
known as CHUG) can telephone (02)
487 1062, or write to PO Box 1578,
Hornsby Northgate NSW 2077.
That completes this edition of The
C64 Column. As usual, please send
your questions, comments and sug-
gestions to The C64 Column, PO Box
288, Gladesville NSW 211 1, or I may
be reached via FidoNet Netmail at
3:713/888.999.
See you all again next month, □
Australian Commodore &
\AMIGA
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AMIGA Review
57
Letters
■■ EDITOR
Real Software ^j
Please!
AfteT being very impressed with
Digital Integration's Tornado on the
IBM, I bought a copy as soon as it
appeared in Amiga format. In particu-
lar, this simulation allows you to fight
your own campaigns, play your own
missions and command a number of
Tornado bombers.
Barely able to control my excite-
ment, I opened the packaging and
turned to the Amiga Technical Sup-
plement. And then - SHOCK! HOR-
ROR! EXPLETIVE DELETED! The
Mission Planner and Squadron Com-
mand options (easily a third of the
game and ALL of the strategy ele-
ment) had been omitted from the
Amiga version! I checked the packag-
ing again - no mention of this monu-
mental limitation and no reduction in
price!
I returned the game and got a re-
fund from my local software provider
- who was equally annoyed at the mis-
leading packaging and advertising.
My question is: How much longer
will Amiga owners be forced to en-
dure this IBM oriented bias from what
now appear to be Microsoft/
Microprose controlled software
houses? All too frequently now the
Amiga versions of games software are
either partially disabled, not hard drive
installable or simply nonexistent!
This is particularly annoying in the
light of the AGA Amigas with both
the speed and the hard drive space to
accommodate virtually any IBM
game.
Isn't it about time Commodore ex-
erted some pressure on software
houses to provide better Amiga sup-
port? Also isn't it time Amiga owners
made their annoyance felt by boycott-
ing products and software houses
which persist in these IBM biased
practices?
Leigh Tristram
Chifley ACT
Upgrading or f^j
OpalVision?
I've been using my trusty A500
without hard drive for about four years
now and am thinking of upgrading.
The A 1200 crossed my mind but it
lacks expansion slots and I'd like a
machine that can use boards like
OpalVision,
But I read in your report on WOC
Pasadena that the new AAA machines
will be available in mid 1994. I'd
rather wait for the new machines if
they don't cost a lot more than the
4000/040.
In the meantime, can you tell me if
I can get the A4000/A1200 develop-
ers hardware/software manuals from
some source in Australia? I would like
the technical specifications for WB3,
the AGA chipset and the Zorro III
slots. By the way, I missed your re-
view of the SCRAM 500 - what's the
verdict?
Raymond C
Caulfield Vic
Ed: The current release time for
the AAA machines is in the third quar-
ter of this year, but official release
dates are regarded throughout the
computer industry as being merely a
way of encouraging a lively discus-
sion on when, if ever, the product re-
ally will hit the streets. The AAA ma-
chines are NOT likely to be cheap,
but you get what you pay for.
Hardware manuals for AGA ma-
chines are something of a sore point -
Commodore don't seem to have re-
leased them, to encourage coders to
stick to the operating system functions
rather than hitting the chips directly
and producing still more programs in-
compatible with later machines: In any
case, if you want the heavy duty docu-
mentation you'll need to be a regis-
tered developer - call Commodore for
more information.
The SCRAM 500 review was a cou-
ple of years ago now. These neat little
A500 expanders aren't in production
any more, although you should still
be able to get the kits from MegaMicro
Technology. The SCRAM's a very
compact and inexpensive 8Mb RAM
expander and SCSI-1 controller for
the A500; it's reasonably quick, uses
ZIP RAMs which are a shade cheaper
than the SIMMs everyone else uses,
takes up very little room and is utterly
reliable, if you can find one second
hand or want to build one yourself
it's still a great little unit.
M
Some advice
forACAR
A few cosmetic things you might
try:
1) Higher cost/quality glossy stock
(thicker cover - more protection).
2) Increase the size - hire more
staff so you don't kill yourself doing
everything.
3) With the above, increase the
cover price accordingly. When was
the last time it went up? How can you
58
AMIGA Review
afford this $3.95 thing?!
4) Keep up the informative "vs"
articles - the Syquest versus Bernoulli
comparison was great. More of the
same, please, but not just a feature
checklist - talk to the engineers in-
volved in design and manufacture if
you can; this makes the pros take no-
tice.
5) Keep an up to date calendar of
local events - clearly set out so it can
be read at a glance. This could be in
the news column.
6) Stop trying to appeal to the
"Amiga heads" who 're already con-
vinced they've got the best computer
and don't need their egos stroked. In-
stead, I'd rather hear about what's on
the horizon.
ACAR's a great mag and I think
you're doing a great job. Any help 1
can give I will.
Bill Hodge
Ed: Deleted from this letter was,
among other things, a large amount
of begging, pleading and cajoling for
the free CD 32. Your vote's been noted,
Bill - and the case of Scotch was a
nice touch!
In reply to questions one through
three, we are giving serious consid-
eration to making the magazine big-
ger and a bit more expensive. Indeed,
ACAR's a cheap magazine and the
market could stand it being a little
pricier. We'd rather put the extra
money into more pages than better
stock, though - the existing paper and
binding hold together perfectly well.
You certainly will be seeing more
comparative articles, and we do talk
to manufacturers and designers while
writing many of them. In our opinion,
though, it's more important to have
hard data on how the product actu-
ally works than the understandably
biased opinions of its creators.
A calendar is an interesting idea;
we '11 see what we can do about it.
And how dare you suggest we stop
telling people in which areas the
Amiga beats other platforms? What
are you, a traitor? Guards - seize him!
M
We like
Australian
Your magazine is one of the best
that I've ever read. Some of this is
due to the fact that it is Australian,
with Australian prices. Despite this, it
can be improved. Don't take this nega-
tively, but as a constructive piece of
information.
I think it would be better if you had
more of EVERYTHING. Are you ac-
tually planning to revise the whole
magazine and update everything? If
you are, would you consider a cover
disk? To keep costs down, you could
have the disk available only by sub-
scription. This would be good for peo-
ple like me wanting loads of PD and
game demos, and also for people who
only want the paper mag.
I'd like to see a comparison be-
tween the top digitisers and frame
grabbers. You normally do this as a
head to head with only two products
compared; I'd specifically like to see,
say, the 10 top digitisers. I've included
a couple of pages regarding the AAA
chipset, which I got off a bulletin board
- is it a hoax?
Do you have an E-Mail address -
this would be a more convenient way
of sending and receiving information
regarding the magazine.
Ben Anderson
Shepparton Vic
Ed: As we said above, we are in-
deed considering adding more of eve-
rything, including cover price. The is-
sue of the cover disk keeps coming
back to haunt us - essentially we al-
ready have something quite like what
you suggest, with the companion disks
to the Hot PD column every couple of
months.'
We don 't have a digitiser overview
planned at the moment - but in the
meantime, enjoy the review of the new
Vidi Amiga RT digitisers in this issue!
The AAA text file you included
seems to be genuine, and matches the
other specifications for the new chipset
that have been floating around and
that we've mentioned in previous
ACARs. Release dates for the new
machines are still dubious, though.
You can contact Andrew Farrell or
Daniel Rutter on the Amiga Connec-
tion bulletin board, (02) 970 6444 and
with the FidoNet address 3:7 J 4/909.
Feel free to mail us!
Business ^j
Users
I use my A 5 00 with GVP hard drive
for business purposes - 1 run a small,
part time nursery. I think that there is
a lack of business oriented software
for the Amiga, especially in the area
of financial and accounting packages.
It would be great to see a regular fea-
ture on business uses for the Amiga. I
am sure that there are a lot more read-
ers using their machines for this pur-
pose than anyone thinks - and possi-
bly for some unusual applications. For
example, my main uses are for word
processing (Wordworth), spreadsheets
(ProCalc), database (Superbase) and
desktop publishing my annual plant
catalogues {Pro Page).
Up to date reviews of the latest
software are a great aid to decision
making. An annua! feature for feature
comparison of the top word process-
ing/DTP/spreadsheet etc software
would be worthwhile.
Regular features on hardware are a
good idea - how about a complete,
jargon busting article on laser print-
ers?
ACAR's in an unusual position as
the only really serious Amiga maga-
zine published in Australia. The Mac
and PC platforms are well supported
by magazines that can afford large
staffs and lots of space to cover all
topics, while ACAR must be all things
to all readers.
However, I've noticed that other
Australian computer magazines have
no interest in publishing articles on
Amigas, even when prompted to
AMIGA Review
59
Letters
through their letter columns - there's
still the popular perception of Ainigas
as nothing but games machines.
I think the Amiga is underrated as
a general purpose computer - and IBM
compatible software Is outrageously
priced, considering the size of the
market. One certainly has to be im-
pressed by the greater efficiency of
the Amiga operating system.
Greg Stevens
Borenore NSW
Ed: The Amiga is a perfectly capa-
ble business machine, but no matter
how many people use it for serious
applications they can 't come near the
tens of millions of high-powered cor-
porate users that the IBM compatible
world sports. With this kind of user
base you get vast investments in soft-
ware development, resulting in busi-
ness packages for the IBM world which
do far more than anything on the
Amiga has ever managed.
Whether people actually need all
this power is highly debatable, of
course, and it's true that IBM soft-
ware's overpriced, but simply because
of the massive market penetration of
the IBM- platform there's no way to
make the Amiga a success in business.
If Amigas start running Microsoft op-
erating systems like Windows NT then
this will immediately turn around, but
there's considerable skepticism about
whether that will ever come to pass.
Annual overviews are the kind of
thing we used to include in the Amiga
Annual - but Commodore aren't fund-
ing it any more, so we're not making
one. If the proposed enlargement of
the magazine goes ahead, it should
give us more room for such ambitious
projects:
The laser printer demystification
article sounds interesting - we'll see
what we can do!
And you're exactly right - ACAR
has to cater for all the Amiga users
out there, from casual gamers to ren-
dering freaks to desktop publishers to
composers. It's a tough job, but let-
ters like yours reassure us that we're
managing it (oh, and we're impressed
that you didn't crawl, for a free CD32,
too). Thanks!
On Screen Q&A
li l i O^ i Bifi ti f l 'i!. .,,
&
Ports Of Call
Holger Schaarschmidt of East
Doncaster, Vic, has been having trou-
bles with that golden oldie. Ports of
Call - not with playing the game, but
with installing it to the hard drive on an
Amiga 500 with a GVP A500-C. X-
Copy's XLENT feature puts the pro-
gram disk onto the drive all right, but
when the PoC icon is clicked it opens a
blank screen and locks up.
Our opinion about this is that it might
have some badly written reference to
DFO: in there somewhere - try using a
hex editor (such as DEKSID on Dos
Utilities III from Prime Artifax) to hunt
through the files and replace every inci-
dence of DFO: with POC:, then assign
POC: to the directory the game's in-
stalled to. Another possibility is it just
needs to be in a logical device with the
same name as the original floppy, so try
assigning that name to the directory it
occupies.
These are just guesses, though - has
anyone out there done it? ^__^
Reel Fish'n iS?
Di Taylor of Hervey Bay Qld, is look-
ing for a manual for the elderly game
Reel Fish'n, from Interstel Corporation
and released in 198S. The only address
given for the company on the disk is PO
Box 57825 (big post office!), Webster,
and she (and we!) has not a clue where
that is. If anyone knows where this is or
has a copy of this game that they'd like
to sell, give Di a call on (071) 253 775
Epic 131
Edwin Blackie of Craigmore SA has a
problem. In Epic, refuelling and reload-
ing, is done by pressing Enter. Edwin
fj
has an Amiga 600. The Amiga 600 has
no keypad. AndEpic is not a DOS game,
so DOS based keypad patch programs
won't work. This may explain why on
the end of his letter Edwin asks if any-
one would like to swap an A500 with a
1 .5Mb or more for his 2Mb A600...
On a iighter note, Edwin has also found
a better Road Rash hint - try typing
00001-04310-MSOPC-17PFM, and en-
joy $7,815,000.
Hard Drive
Installation ^rv
Bill Owens of Ballina NSW, is under-
standably irritated at the still large
number of Amiga games which can't be
installed to a hard drive. Run from floppy
by all means, but games that can ONLY
run from floppy make our fine compu-
ter look distinctly cheesy next to the
hordes of installable IBM games.
The usual reason for the absence of HD
installation is the somewhat outdated
notion of copy protection - usually done
from manuals these days, if at all - and
the mania among programmers for fit-
ting as much as possible onto a few
disks, foregoing normal DOS format-
ting in the process. Of course, hard drive
owners don't care at all if the game's
ten kilobytes too big to fit on three disks
- make it four and installable, for crying
out loud.
Now that the vein in our collective fore-
head has stopped throbbing, Bill is stuck
in the first stage (forest section) of
Knightmare. Any ideas, anyone?
Send your questions and answers to
On Screen Help Line, 21 Darley
Road, Rand wick 2031.
60
AMIGA Review
Amiga Connection
goes DLG
Welcome to our new
communications column,
which will be shared by
Daniel Rutter and Andrew
Leniart. They'll be taking a
regular look at the latest
BBS systems, new
communications software
as well as sharing general
tips on modem usage,
Amiga Connection
I've been giving the Amiga Connec-
tion BBS on (02) 970 6444 rather a lot
of publicity recently. Here's some more.
It's back. It's working. Tapclink's
online, so there's multi-megabytes of
stuff coming in (much of it irrelevant
but nobody's making you download it).
It looks as if Sydney's finally got an
Amiga Monster Board of the same cali-
bre as Distributor in Adelaide, and about
time too. If you're used to the interface
used by all those faceless IBM based
boards out there you might be a tad
disoriented by the Amiga DLG system
Amiga Connection now sports, but
you'll get the hang of it and it's worth it
for the high-powered message and file
tagging utilities alone. Give it a ring -
Oiilinte!
by Daniel Rutter
tell 'em I sent you and you'll get mem-
bership for exactly the same price ($55)
as every other schmoe.
Amiga Connection is the Australian
major site for Tapelink, a system
whereby tons and tons of files are put
onto a monster tape backup cartridge
every week or so and mailed between
countries. This gives access to files sup-
porting all computers and piles of other
stuff, like the Electronic Publications
Network which allows you to download
various great works of literature old
enough to no longer be covered by copy-
right Mark Twain, Little Women, the
ancient classics, you name it.
There are also plain oddball areas
like the Survival Net for people who
really want the world to end in a pretty
nuclear sort of way so they can use all
those machine guns they've stashed in
the basement.
You name it, it's there, and a LOT of
it's there - over the coming weekend
Mario Nicotra, sysop of the Amiga Con-
nection, will be adding another three
HUNDRED megabytes of Tapelink
files. Wow, huh!
Amiga Connection's also got the en-
tire Fish disk collection online, along
with the mighty Aminet CD-ROM and
a few other complete PD libraries. You' II
need to pay membership if you want
access to them, though (hey, it's not a
charity!). You get plenty of stuff for
nothing, though, so it's fine just to hang
out on the board and upload a bit of
stuff to pay for your downloads.
Oz Online
I've mentioned this board in Hot PD
before; it's a commercial bulletin board
(Amiga Connection doesn't make much
money) which gives you a week of try-
out access and then requires you to pay
for membership, paying rather more than
Online!
Amiga Connection wants although there
seems to be a semi-permanent special
offer going ("Last Three Days!" for the
last three weeks ...).
What does Oz Online give you that
Amiga Connection doesn't? It's got the
same iarge selection of Fido and Usenet
message areas, and the same large file
base. Oz Online doesn't get Tapelink,
but it should have an excellent
throughflow of Amiga stuff once it picks
up some momentum and it's Amiga
specific - Amiga Connection, as I said,
gets all sorts of stuff of no particular
relevance to the Amiga.
Oz Online has a better online games
section than Amiga Connection, includ-
ing a genuine Multi-User Dungeon
game, which lets you interact with lots
of other users - teaming up or stabbing
backs on your trip through the usual
impressively complex text-only fantasy
world.
Oz Online also does a regular link-
up to the smaller Labyrinth bulletin
board, which lets users on each system
chat with each other and (this is the
REALLY cool part) use all the features
of the other board as if they were logged
onto it - games, downloads, messages,
everything.
Call Oz Online on (02) 264 3636.
Use your free week and decide for your-
self if the money is worth it.
500cc Formula One
Enough of the fancy-pants new mon-
ster boards. One BBS that's been going
for ages and shows no signs of slowing
down is 500cc Formula One, on (02)
550 4317. It's an Amiga/IBM support-
ing BBS with plenty of Fido areas, a
decent selection of online games and an
excellent file section.
500cc not hooked up to any file dis-
tribution networks - it's just called by a
lot of people who upload hot stuff all
the time. Programs, music, pictures, text
- if you call once a week you'll always
have a big list of new things to grab and
plenty of interesting messages to read.
I call 500cc once every two days, or
even more often; drop me a line there!
AMIGA Review
61
I 1
•
V
1 736 x 576, 24 bit - Raytraced by Tim White using Real 3D V2.
I 640 x 512, 24bit. Background created using Scenery Animator 4, main
image raylraced using Imagine by Steve Goodwin.
I Hand drawn pixel by pixel, 640 x 51 2
by Rebecca Hurley using Dpairrt 111,
1 640 x 512, rendered in Imagine 2.0
by William J.Porter.
I EHB 352 x 290, hand drawn pixel by pixel.
Amiga users are a talented bunch.
In this regular spread of graphics
created by people like you, we'll be
show casing the best images from
around the country. So, if you've
got something to contribute, why
not shoot us a disk - or modem the
file to our simple BBS on (02) 816
4714.
(please include your name, tel no and
how you created the image)
BTW: Like much of Amiga review,
this two page spread was desktop
published using Professional Page
4. 1 on an '030 Amiga.
::• ' ■M^
I Raytrace: 752 x 480 pixels, 24-bit - by M. Thompson's using Lightwave 3.0.
1 24 bit - 1024 x 768, raytraced using Imagine by Adam Benjamin.
1 704 x 566, rendered in Imagine2 by Avi Piiosof.
• i^^w^Bgggjgi
;'<.:.%:■-
i
£~~-:-\
^^^^Hk^^kZr^^*^**
► 24-bit, 736 x 576: Raytraced in Real3d v2,
textures in Opal Paint, by Ted Whitton.
1 768 x 576, 24bit: Raytraced by David Sloan
using Imagine 2.0.
LV:
ToolManager & MagicWB
Your Workbench can look this good -
Toolmanager provides fast access to any
program. If you're not using it, you're
wasting time. MagicWB replaces those
dull WB icons with new 8-colour versions
which are much smarter. 1 Disk each.
Have you
wondered
what's on
our latest
disks?
All $5 each...
(even less when you
buy more.)
Hot Games #12 NEW
A disk packed with great new games
including the fabulous Loderunner clone -
Minerunner. Allows up to four players and
has all the original levels from the
popular Appte I! and Commodore 64
version. Also includes Battle Cars,
Dynamite Wars (2 -player), Gal acta id,
Megasquad and Parcheese.
AGA
DEMO #2
AGA Demo #2 NEW
A fine demo showing of the capabilities of
AGA - with a smart new bouncing balls
segment, some cool copper effects and
impressive polygon animation.
Ideal as an in shop demo too. Mentions
all the A1 200's good features.
One disk. AGA machine required. Ideal
for A1 200 owners.
FntKjEteiKn KtTFferfolfc
^sMirlinilnMtfeil
UMawtw
■.:;=.':' -a
tWnjLnW
fcicPik
MiBie'iUlH.ji-l]]
feU: lit tolling
i**[»B i«l.-
fhASWtir&MI \m\'H-A- Th>
Database II NEW
A collection of simple to use database
programs for maintaining all sorts of lists -
from catalogues to clients. Flexer -
pictured above - is one of the new
programs included on release II of the
database compilation. Flexer's form-like
display makes it ideal for beginners, and
powerful enough for advanced users.
-
fW^M^fiif^^
Protracker
Edit and create your own music. Alter
instruments digitally, sequence up drums,
samples and create stand alone modules.
Protracker is the one used by the game
designers to create music. We also have
23 disks of excellent music tracks (we're
very fussy about what's included) which
can load into Protracker. One disk, 1 Mb
iM«wnFimi
Image
Processing
Digital Illusions is fully
functional and allows
impress image processing
and animation functions to
be executed on IFF
images. Powerful AdPro
style interface. One disk.
(HAMLAB demo inc. too)
New Ganfi 1 *
; .ft^pijt J . quit J
Education #5
\ £ "• i i 1 : L* I
I O C I [ 1 t!
! ■ I t 1 i-* :
i -■;[ m#
!>«me.|
Level j f |
Try j.i'.l"
Scoffs \ rt :
Top Score I 9 i
NEW
We now have a total of six disks of
education software, Mem (a memory
game - picture above) is from education
#5 - one of five programs on the disk.
Others include Maths Adventure,
Division, Counting and Lemonade.
Education 6 has an excellent puzzle
game called OXYD.
Turn the page for
more great
software...
or call our FREE
CALL HOTLINE
008 252 879
Sydney 02 879 7455
Prime Artifax
Prime Artifax
Low Cost Software
Emulation Software * Educational • Genealogy * Multimedia
Animation • Home Office * Games • Business * Graphics
Clip-Art • Fonts 'Animation • Utilities • Services
MAILORDER: PO BOX 288, Gladesville 2111
VISA
:1ft
008 252 879
ORDER HOTLINE
Sydney (02) 879 7455
Amiga 1200 Make It Work
Having trouble getting programs
to run on your new A1 200? This
disk gives you a number of
options to dramatically improve
compatability. Simply run it first
before trying the program in
question.
MagicWB - Ideal for A 1200
Revamp your Workbench - new
icons and backdrops - slick,
clean look - needs 8 colour,
hires-laced display Ideal for
A1 200 or A4000 owners with
1940 or better monitor.
WB2.X or better required.
HOT GAMES DISKS
* #1 - Air Ace, Missite Command (Atari
style). Care- Race, Downhill placer
(Skins)
* #2 - Blackjack. Metro [Trains)
China Challenge, Klondike (21)
' #3 - Hate [30 Perspective shoot 'em
up), M&gaball breakout style game)
■ #4 - Galaxian, Pacman, Space
mvaaers ana Asteroid look-a-iikes ■
"the classics'
* #5 - Imperium, Mech Ffcjhl, SCombal
■ #$ - Chutek Defender, PharoarTs
Curse, SkyFlght, spaceWar
- HI ■ Amiga Tanx, Cave Hunner,
X-Frre, Bally III. Llamalrcn,
Obess-O-Mafc
- #9 - Asteroids, Bug Blaster, Microbe.
Poing, Hevenge of me Mutant
Camels, Ring War, Trlx
' #9 - Pacman (brilliant copy ol the
original}, OmegaRace, Columns,
Nebula and POD.
* #10 - Donkey Kens, Gaiaga (lite
best!). Artllerus, Fleuch
* #1 1 - Scorched Tanks - the latest
super version, 2-4 ptayers.
■ Adventure 1 - Island of Neoholon,
Rescue & Jungle, Zut Alars! and
Treasure Island. Some text based.
Star Trek - The Came, whh
sound-FX, animation, point and click
interface, various missions. 1Mb
Balance of Power ■ Strategy game
for one ot two players. Control Ihe
world powers lo avoid nuclear war.
* UChess - Chess game ■ Needs 4Mb
and acceleralor - Ideal for A12Q0 or
4000. AGA Support.
Home Office
■ CAD ■ Five ProGrams: Speaker and
Circuit Design, Landscape &
Archilectual
New Database and Finance
Our popular Database and
Finance disks have been
updated with new versions of
software and new programs
including Flexer and EasyCalc.
Now they're both easier to use
and more powerful.
Update NOW.
EasyCalc ->
JC-GrapK
Create impressive 3D graphs-
save as I FF or object files for
Imagine and other animation
programs. Load/save and edit
data. Works with most
wordprocessors and DTP.
* Database ■ Hyperbase, HyperDialer,
DataEasy, home Manager, bBasell
■ Forms Designer -Text be&ed forms
editor.
* Genealogy I - A*Gene arid Family
iis^;v
* Genealogy 2 - ArJ&y - Up to 10DO
people, WB2,;<.1MD required.
- Home Budget - Asserted hom*
finance programs.
* Home Tools - TouchTyping, simple
dalabese, FumJiure Helper, Resume
Maker, VCR Datahase, Diet Aid) and
LP Database,
* Spreadsheets - Easy to use SCsic,
SPREAD ertd EasyCalc
* Finance - BankN, Your Money,
Budger and CheckBooK
* Text Editors - Az, UEdil, QED, DME
+ Te>l Editors Guide
* Wordprocessing - Text Plus,
AmigaFOX h Liner, SuperRetLab,
GWPRini & Print Studio
■ Prc-texi 4.3 - Includes spell
checker, word count, footnotes.
anagrams - hundreds more
features. Text only - no graphites,
' Bowling - Keep (rack of oowfing
scores. 1 Mb required.
Comwunicatfone
■ NCOMM 3.0 - Shareware AREXX,
SCRIPTing h simple BBS mode.
« Term 3.4 - Freeware, scupitng,
powerful, 3 disk?, hard drive req.
WB2.x required.
Fonta
* CG-Font Pack 1 - Suitable for
Workbench 2.x. and above. Final
Copy, Professional Page, Pagestream
and PageSetter ill, 60 different
Compugraphic fonts. 6 disk set.
* Bit-Mapped Font Pack 1 - Suitable
lor Worbench 1-3. Over 40 different
lonta, ready to use directly from floppy
- ideal for Deluve Paint and most paint
programs. 6 Disk Set.
Clip Art
- Clip Am Pack 1 - A selecfton of black
and white, bitmapped dips, suitable
lor wordprocessing. and desktop
publishing. Three disk sei - -51 3.50
■ Stmeluted Clip 1 - Assorted
ProDraw formal clip -art.
Desktop Publishing
- Pagestream Enhancs* - requires
Pagestream 2.x or better. New
drivers, Postscript utilities and more.
• Professional Page Enhancer -
requires ppage 3.x 0* belter. Lots of
greal genies for smad borders,
copying pages, group, special effects.
■ PageSetter 1 ,2 - Entry level desktop
publishing program.
Cartoons (Require 1Mb FREE)
■ Cartoon 1: Batman, Shuttlecock,
Stealthy
' Cartoon 2: Amy Vs Walker
■ Cartoon 3; Jugette. Jugette 2.
Juggle* 2
■ Cartoon 4; F1S Combat, Stealthy
Llanver II
'Cartoon 5; Digs Bunny
Big Cartoons- (Require 3Mb)
• Big Cartoon 1: Anti-Lemmings
* Big Cartoon 2: Coyote
> Big Cartoon 3: Pogo
' Big Cartoon A: The Dating Game (2
disks)
■ Big Cartoon 5: Unsporting
* Big Cartoon 6: Enterprise Docking
■ Big Cartoon 7: Bait-Masking
Minimorph
Create your own
animation of
morphing just like
program costing
$100's. We'll even
scan in your photos
for you and prepare
them ready for
processing. ($5 per
photo)
Works in grey-scale
only. 1Mb RAW)
required. Powerful
reasonably easy to
learn interface, ideal
for A 1200.
Education
■ Education 1 ■ Elements, Draw Map,
Rubtk, Space Log, Gears
* Education 2 - Gravity Well, Planels,
Life Cycles, Orbit Enigmas, ZPloi
■ Education 3 - Word Puizle,
Crossword, Word Game, A-Solve,
POWER LOGOl
■ Education 4 - PlotMap - Two disk set
- creales maps of world, save in IFF
format
* hrypertext ■ Create text files witfi
links to animation, graphics, sounds,
songs - anything (vfa AREXX). i Mb &
WB2.V required-
* SfockmarfceT Simulation ■ Buy and
sell shares, take out a bank overdraft,
and eventually qualify to jolng the
insiders club. Local program to
simulate local conditions.
■ Chemistry - Create 3D models of
different molecules
Emulation
* Atari Emulator ■ German Only
- MS-DOS Emulelor - PC-TASK
(shareware-no write 1o disk) &
Transformer. Run most MS-DOS
business software
* C64 Emulator - Run G64 Program,
Interface C64 Peripherals (opt
interface available from U.S.A. Only)
Graphics and Animation
' Graphics t - SUH Store: Por
sequencing slills lor video production
■ Graphics 2 ■ Mostra, ImageLab.
TifleGen, sMovie, ABridge.
SesneGenDemo, SJldeMaaler
* Graphics 3 ■ lcon*Editor, Turbo Title,
Gyro-Animation UBls
* Graphics 4 - FreePainl, Graff Hi,
PED, PicBase - IFF Database
- MandleBrot Tools ■ Six Disks, Create
DISK PRICES
All our disks are covered by one
pricing schedule. All prices
includes postage, packing and
support.
Disks
Price
Cost/Disk
1
$ 5.00
$ 5,00
2
$ 9.50
$4.75
3
$13.50
$ 4.50
4
$17.00
$4.25
5
$20.50
$4.10
6
$24.00
$4.00
(for orders of 6 or more disks, each
additional disk is $3.75) We use quality
Memores Brand diskettes.
Price includes postage.
C.O.D extra $4.75
amazing shapes and patterns'
* fwinifWorp-fi - Create your own IS
grey-scale morphs, 1Mb
* AGA Demos 1 - HOIS-AGA and
AGA- Amiga Being.
+ Mobile! ■ By Spaceballs ■ 3D
Animation, At'200 and 3OD0
compatible.
* AGA images - Six disks of hoi AGA
piccees including 3D rendered In
Aladdin, and photos.
* Imagine Objects 1 • Enterprise,
Chess Pieces, Amiga 3000.
MueIc and Sound
* Med 3.1 ■ The best Amiga Jow-level
sequencer ■ some MIDI support
' Sound Tools - Play, edlt h arrange,
distort and create IFF sound samples
* Sound FX 1 ■ Filled wiiti shod, sweel
sound samples ■ Bells, Morns, Dogs..
* Remix 1 - Two remixed music
samples - Madonna and Black Be*
- Tracks 1 - 1733, Agresston, Angies,
Arkenoid, Atmospheric, AxelF,
Azeirev
* Tracks 2 - Bsa| n Benny, Biochall,
Biochal2, Blue Days. Blue Moon.
Boss, CaN Me, T.C-S,
■ Tracks 3 - Cloud Song, Creation 2,
Crockets, Ear, Electric Dreams, Last
Winja II, Megaforce, Mete! Synlh
- Tracks 4 - Oxygens, Plano-RInK
PopCorn, HSI-Hard, Skylight, Smoke,
SupeSASiC, Tocalia
* Tracks 5 - BatDanee, Bond, Fresh
House, Lambada. Pawnl, WasteLand
* Movie Samples - & DIsKa of IFF
'Make My Day" styls samples
(Tracks 6-23 also available now.)
Improve Your Workbench
■ AGA Utilises 1 ■ AGA Anim players,
picture showers. AGA dlsa&le, GIF
shower and more.
• WB1-3 ©upgrdi&k - Bootable,
ready-to-mn. ReadTWrile MS-DOS
disks, DIRWORK file manager,
AutoCLI WB Enhancer, Includes
Documentation on disk.
» WB£.x Enhancer - Icons, Presets,
NAG program for appointments,
Fractal Screen Blanker, KCommodity;
Auto window activation,
Clock/Memory usage, KeySlroke
Audible Click, Gadgetless window
closing. Hotkey, Mouse accelerator
and much mgrsi.
» Antivirus - Latest proleeflon using
BOOT);, Tirtorlal on Virus- Protection
and more
■ Hacker - Rip music Irom games,
create custom boot blocks, loci for
secret messages on disks
■ DOS Utilities III - All the latest PD
Utilities to orgeni&e your disks
- MS-DOS Utilities ■ READ/WRITE
and FORMAT 720K MS-DOS Disks!
► Hard Disk Utilities 1 - HD Backup,
Aleck security, Undeleter, Disk editor,
mark out bad blocks, alter your boot
logo, find misplaced files and
HDMem.
' Farbench • Network two Amigas via
a special Parallel cable, ideal for
CDTV owners lo use as a CD-HOM
drive.
Programming
■ ACE AmigaBASIC Compiler 1,1 -
Speed upyourSASlC programs inic
fast executable binary. Includes linker
and assembler.
' Pascal - Two disks, PASCAL
includes PCO compiler, A6SK. Blink,
Debugger. Won, examples and PCQ
source.
Hot Games 1 1
Two player
fun!
• Scorched Tanks - a classic
action/strategy game for 2-4
players.
• TNG - Star Trek strategy
game with Next Generation
scenarios.
ORDER FORM - Post to Prime Artifax, P.O. Box 288, Gladesville 2111
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Entertainment
Galactic
Wham, Bam - sorry Ma'am!
The back blocks of the
Vega sector is no place for
a lady anyhow. Okay - 1 know you've
gotNylocrete Body Armour. But that's
not the point. A dame could get badly
injur ... OOOFFF! Boy, this baby's in
no mood for talking.
We're playing Body Blows Galac-
tic, and I have to admit I'm taking a
terrible beating. We're competing in
the Pan-Galactic Championships, a bat-
tle for supremacy that takes place on
planets all around the universe.
Body Blows Galactic is the sequel to
the original Body Blows, one of the most
popular beat-em-ups of all time. Natu-
rally, a game like this is open to the
criticism that it's just "more of the
same." You've moved all the moves,
you've kicked all the kicks ... but hold
the complaints until you've checked this
one out. The fact is, Body Blows Galac-
tic has an unusual amount of style, flair
and variety.
For a start, die outer space scenario
makes for a unique look and feel. It's
far from your typical white pyjamas
and black belt oriental scenario. And
it's not your average city street gang
buster Double Dragon clone either.
The six planetary backdrops are su-
perb. There's earth, of course, which
we know pretty well. But try Titanica,
the most technologically advanced
planet in the universe. Here's where
you'll take on Tekno and Lazer, two
high-tech tough guys with an attitude
problem.
Then there's Eclipse, a planet that
doesn't rotate. One side is permanently
freezing, the other is perpetually ablaze
- and the life forms have evolved appro-
priately. You'll be fighting the cham-
pion from each race - Inferno, and
Warra.
Gellorn-5 and Miasm are next on the
agenda, and then Feminion, in the far
end of the Vega sector. Ruled by women,
the men of the planet are totally under
the thumb. And as I've been fighting it
out with Azona, I can see why. Ooffi
Here she comes again!
As the game begins, you can choose
any planet as your home base - and you
can play the part of any of the 12 char-
acters. The range of possible movements
is awesome - each character has a reper-
toire of 21 different kicks and blows
that will take you quite a while to mas-
ter. The icy Warra, for example, has all
the standard moves - and also his ice-
pick. Not only that, if you press the fire
button and hold it down, you'll see a
power bar incrementing on the status
display. When it hits the top, release
the button and you'll fire off "The Big
Freeze." Do the same thing with In-
ferno, and he'll let loose a devastating
"Heat Seeker."
The sprites in Body Blows Galactic
are huge, taking up almost half the
screen height - you'll almost believe
you're playing an arcade machine. Not
only that, they're fast, smooth, and well
animated. The detail is impressive too -
each player is decked out nicely, with
high tech outfits and accessories.
By the way, there's a free bonus disk
in the box too, with a playable demo of
the soon to be released Ovei'drive - a
view-from-flx-top car racing game- and
a fully working version of Apache, an
update of the old favour-
ite Choptifter.
Phil Campbell
Ratings
Graphics
87%
Sound
79%
Gameplay
89%
Overall
86%
Distributed by
Hotpoint (02) 634 6499
RRP $69.95.
fit'*, ,fi<*S«<* ■"•■«
SUMfiQM
mniMn ^v
66
AMIGA Review
Entertainment
This I simply cannot understand.
Zool on the CD-32 (see page
80) is an entertaining and
mildly addictive game which I can
play happily for hours. Zool 2, which
runs from floppy disks on the Amiga,
is not as inviting, as enjoy-
able, or as playable.
Which is strange, as the
game is very similar to
Zool but with extras. Pos-
sibly having seen Zoo /first,
I was expecting great
things and numerous im-
provements, and while
these have been added they
don't seem as funny as the
original.
After careful checking I
have discovered that the
programmer, the graphics
designer, the producer and
the creative consultant have all been
changed between one game and the
other. Both were copyrighted in 1993
and both are published by the same
company. Something strange appears
to be going on here. Perhaps they re-
Ratings
Graphics:
75%
Sound:
72%
Gatneplay:
73%
Overall:
75%
Supplied by Logico
(02) 519 6719
RRP $69.95.
trenched the original team and started
from scratch.
Interesting that the manual for the
original Zool is only a couple of pages
and you do not need to read it. For
Zool 2 it is a much bigger production
and a female Zool has been added to
avoid accusations of sexism.
The prose style in the new, larger
manual is somewhat hard to take, be-
ing purmy without being funny. "There
some fowl play down at
Swan Lake, some forked
tongue double-dealing at
Snaking Pass ..." gives you
the flavour.
But I am fascinated why
I found this game boring af-
ter a while and decided to
give it away.
Perhaps it has become
over complicated. Certainly
it is over-decoTated and
somewhat over the top. I
doubt that you will enjoy
Zool 2 as much as Zool. Pity.
Gareth Powell
m <mwd
MMM
n ilium
3i =
?i£^
mm
AMIGA Review
67
Entertainment
Ratings
Graphics:
75%
Sound:
70%
Gameplay:
78%
Overall:
75%
Supplied by
Logico (02) 519 6719
RRP $69.95.
Personally, I prefer Sigourney
Weaver with hair and in a dress.
In Alien 3, the movie tie in
game, she has the cropped convict
skull, a pair of combat green trousers
and a skimpy, Chesty Bond vest both
of which she fills most convincingly.
If you have seen the
movie you will not be
helped in making sense
of the game because like
almost every movie tie
in I have ever seen the
movie is only the depar-
ture point for the game.
The plot gets lost early
on. This is a mixture of
maze, problem solving
and shoot-em-up and. as
such is most effective.
The space ship Sulaco
is involved in a malfunc-
tion in which an unborn
Alien manages to invest
itself into the body of
Ripley who was in a
state of hyper sleep
along with Newt and
Hicks in cryotubes. The
names comes from cryo-
genics which is the art
of extending life by deep
freezing.. (Are you fol-
lowing all this? There
will be questions later.)
Okay, now the cargo
carry part of the space
ship disengages and
crashes on Fiorina 161,
killing Newt and Bishop
but leaving Ripley unconscious but
alive. For which relief much thanks.
This is going to be one of those
days because the planet on which you
have crashed is inhabited by hard-core
convicts. All of which leads to Ripley
- or, if you prefer, Sigourney Weaver
- to face the task of rescuing the Al-
iens' captives and then destroying the
Aliens themselves.
That is the situation as I under-
stand it but I cannot make that relate
to the fact that our heroine keeps com-
ing across bodies in an advanced state
of St Vitus dance (the prisoners) which
she rescues by walking through them
so that they collapse and disappear..
Sigourney Weaver, short hair or not,
can walk through me any
day of the week, but
whether I would then col-
lapse and disappear is
open for much debate.
The game plays in a se-
ries of stages and depend-
ing what stage you are at
you either rescue prison-
ers or exterminate aliens.
You need to use the radar
screen in the top right
hand corner of the com-
puter screen to track down
the prisoners and you
reach them through a com-
plex maze of ladders and
tunnels - mainly populated
by aliens through which
you have to blast a way.
This program comes
from Virgin - the company
of Richard Branson that
brought us an airline and
a record store and it is not
bad and has plenty of
game value. But it is not
that great, either. Still and
all, playable and enjoy-
able.
And I love the Alien in
the opening credits.
Gareth Powell
68
AMIGA Review
F-BASIC 5,0
THE FASTEST BASIC COMPILER
AVAILABLE. SPEED & BENEFITS
OF "C" WITH THE EASE OF BASIC.
VERY FAST, COMPACT, STAND
ALONE CODE. COMPATIBLE
WITH DOS 1 .2 TO 3.0 AND ALL
AMIGA PLATFORMS TO AMIGA
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ivery, credit cards welcome.
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1st floor, 100 Yarraia Rd, Pennant Hills 2120.
PO Box 382, Pennant Hills 2120.
ACAR 69
Entertainment
®m°sssa-
ur? it? ~mm
1 1
■
>
The late Colin
Chapman was one of
the world's great fast
car designers. He believed that
low, light ears driven by small
ultra light engines was the way to
go. hi his original Lotus he used a
portable engine built of alloy that
had been used by fire brigades and
was called the Coventry Climax.
The resulting machine went like
the clappers, never got unstuck,
was close to impossible to beat
and about as comfortable to ride
in as being dragged over a rough
road in a wooden box.
The Lotus Seven was a spartan,
totally open two seater machine
with vestigial mudguards and no
comfort. None whatsoever. If you
drove it in England you were
mostly wet, cold, bruised and ex-
hilarated. Later cars improved in
roadholding, acceleration and
speed but the engine stayed small
and the ride as hard as a pawnbro-
ker's heart.
Lotus III, the Ultimate Chal-
lenge, tries to bring you the thrills
and chills of hammering around a
course in a Lotus. And, by damn,
it almost succeeds.
A few things are missing.
The smell of high octane fuel, ,
the scream of anguish of an en-
gine being revved above the red
line, the massive force of side-
ways G as you swing around a
comer in third heeling and toeing
like mad and hoping the driver in
front will keep to the line. The
massive bruises you get on each
thigh trying to keep your body up-
right. But within its limitations this
is a most serious attempt to get it
right.
Once you have the two disks
loaded you are in a racing game
with a very wide range of options.
You can play with one or two play-
ers. Play against time or for the
championship. Have manual or au-
tomatic. {A tip. Start with auto-
matic and master the power slid-
ing of the car. Then switch to
manual and keep the revs up as
high as you can.)
You can create your own tracks
which is great fun and I ended up
with something that made the
Nurburgring look like a tame Sun-
day drive.
You have a choice between three
Loti - the M200, the Esprit Turbo
SE and the Elan SE. Again, if you
will take my advice, you will use
the Esprit Turbo which accelerates
like a scalded cat and rarely loses
the line.
With this game power slides have
been built in. This is very difficult
to do with a normal production car.
The first one to allow it was the
famous gull-winged Mercedes Benz
300SL, This was a brute of a car
which could be broadsided under
power around corners and would race
anything in sight off the road.
The Esprit Turbo is in the same
school as the Mercedes. That is you
can broadside under power which
means that you can steer with the
accelerator almost as well as you
can with die wheel which means,
again, you can keep the engine
screaming as it hangs on to its cylin-
der head blasting around a comer.
Hey, I like this game, I really like it.
They have, as I said, left out the
scream of the engine in mortal agony
and substituted some pleasant fast
paced, fast driving music. But I had
sweaty palms after ten circuits which
is as real as I want to get this week.
Strong approval for a game that is
not, repeat not, CD-Rom but on two
disks manages to capfure a lot of
authenticity and thrills.
Lotus Trilogy includes I^otus Es-
prit Turbo Challenge, Turbo Chal-
lenge 2 and Lotus III, The Ultimae
Challenge.
Gareth Powell
Ratings
Graphics 86%
Sound 70%
Gameplay 87%
Overall 85%
Distributed by Hotpoint
(02) 634 6499. RRP $69.95.
70
AMIGA Review
AMIGA
32 BIT CD BASED ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM
Amiga CD32 from Commodore brings you the world's
first multi-entertainment system: • It's a standard audio
CD player offering crystal clear stereo sound. • It's the
only 32 Bit based video games system which gives you
stunning speed, life-like graphics and millions of colours
that no-one else can get close to offering. • Most
importantly, it has been built to be fully upgradable, so
unlike other products it won't be obsolete in the next
12-18 months.
COMPARE THESE FEATURES:
• Easy connection to standard TV and/or hi-fi system.
• Also capable of connection through SVHS or even composite video.
• Plays norma] audio CD's • CD+G (Graphics) • Karaoke Disks.
• Picture quality is based upon showing up to 256,000 colours from
a palette of 16.7 million colours which means it performs better
than arcade quality games.
• CD's can store up to the equivalent of 660 computer disks of information
which enables stunning audio, visual, graphics, speed and Fun to be
incorporated into this latest generation of video games,
• Built in expansion areas for future add-ons.
4 Ability to play industry standard full motion video CD's and movie CD's
with optional plug-in cartridge.
A Video games to be priced at an average of $69
• Comes complete with 2 games: Oscar and Diggers.
AMIGA CD
YOUR INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE
fr
Entertainment
FUshBAck SoIut*
Part 2
Level Three:
Go right and kill the terminator, open
door, go back right, and re-charge, go left,
kill the terminator, and proceed left, open
door and take lift up to floor 7.
Jump up and proceed left, open floor
trap, go left, and kill the terminator, acti-
vate doors and kill the terminator. Go left
and kill the terminator, go left, climb up,
go left and kill the terminator and the two
floating balls. Proceed left and save here,
go left and take lift up to floor 6.
Go right and open door, roll left, climb
up and go left, watch out for trap door and
re-charge. Go left and kill the terminators,
proceed left and watch out for floor mines.
Take lift up to floor 5. Roll left and kill the
terminator, climb up, roll right and save
here. Go left, climb down from centre
platform, run left and jump up to proceed
left. Jump over pits and continue left, take
the lift up to floor 4.
Go right, release the terminator and kill
him. Open door and go right, recharge and
kill the terminator. On the bottom plat-
form, go right and open door on middle
platform, go right and open floor trap on
bottom platform, go right and take lift up
to floor 3. Kill terminator and go right, kill
middle floating ball, kill terminator, and
save here. Kill remaining three balls and
take lift up to floor 2. Kill terminator, open
door, and kill the other terminator take lift
up to floor L Kill terminator. You'll see
an animation sequence of a TV studio
you ' II receive money and launch on a space
crusade to the next level.
Level Four:
Talk to the man and give him the I.D.
card, go left, kill the cop, and go left here
kill the second cop (use the force field, it
really works). Go down, kill the cop and
floating ball from middle platform, go right
and re-charge, go right and kill the cop,
proceed right, dispose of all the cops that
show their face, go back left and re-charge
if necessary. Go right and inside kill the 2
cops and floating ball move right and call
a taxi. Save here, climb to the top plat-
form, run and jump all the way right and
crack the crystal. Proceed inside and right,
here dispose of the terminator. Take the
lift up, crack the crystal, and get the key,
go all the way right, jump to the middle
platform, right again and recharge, step
left and incinerate the robot (caution: he
explodes). Activate console, go right, open
door with the key, and take the lift down.
Save here, climb up and the wall will
slide away, take the lift down and go up
on the right and kill the terminator. Pick
up the key, and proceed left, get rid of the
two floating balls and climb up, move
right and activate the console so that the
wall slides out of the way. Then left and
climb down, go right and deactivate the
force field, proceed down, open door, and
recharge, take the lift up and go right.
There are two floor traps here, go right
and take the lift down on left, run and
jump to the top platform so you can open
door, go right. Pick up key, lift up, open
door and step inside, kill the floating ball,
jump mine, and run like hell - a force field
will follow you, dispose of the floating
ball and proceed right to the next level.
Level Five:
Terminator will open the door, how-
ever you can't kill him because you don't
have the gun, mn right and pick up the
gun, kill the terminator and pick up the
key. Save here, go right, and open both
doors proceed up (caution: force fields all
over) and left. Go down to re-charge dis-
pose of the bottom terminator and pick up
both teleport parts, kill upper terminator.
Run and jump to right screen avoiding
force fields open the door and throw the
teleport receiver. Teleport here kill the
floating ball and pick up the teleport re-
ceiver jump down and dispose of the slime
creature. Go right and kill the second slime
proceed left. Save here, go left and fall
into pit kill the floating ball in the next pit
and proceed left, climb down and enter
the teleport beam for the next level.
Level Six:
Go right and kill the slime, open the
door, re -charge, go back left and take the
lift down. Go down, kill the slime, pick up
the rock, and go left, throw rock at the
sensor to open door and go left activate
the switch to open the floor on the bottom
platform. Shoot the door, operate switch
and dispose of the slime, collect atomic
charge and proceed left, check out the
journal, go down. Open the floor, and pro-
ceed down re-charge and kill the slime,
'throw the teleport receiver into the pit and
teleport, down, kill the slime and go down.
72
AMIGA Review
Entertainment
Save here, kill mutant dog and proceed
left, open door and kiD the slime, go right,
pick the up key, and step right intti the
teleporter go right and up take the lift up,
go right, and place the key for next level.
Level Seven:
Jump up and take the lift up, be ready
to kill the slime and then collect the 2
explosive mice (here kitty, kitty) proceed
up run and jump to avoid the falling bombs.
Throw the teleport receiver to the left and
take the lift up, activate switch so that the
lift goes back down, move ail the way left
and re-charge. Go right and gel the
teleporter ready, jump into the pit with the
slime and activate switch then immedi-
ately teleport, be ready to kill the slime at
the bottom. Pick up the teleport receiver,
move right, pick up key, and open door
take lift up.
Save here, roll right avoiding the force
fields, take lift down and insert key using
lift. Blow up the floor mines, throw the
teleport receiver into the pit and teleport
down. At the bottom kill the slime then
using careful timing dispose of the or-
ganic entrails inside the half-sphere, pick
up the teleport receiver.
Follow these instructions carefully; Step
to the right of the floor pit, jump left (keep
the button depressed) to hang from the
floor, move joystick down and you should
fall down and hang from the bottom, once
you jump all the way down, proceed.
Move right and leave the teleport re-
ceiver, go ail the way left and recharge,
take the lift down.
Save here. Move right and shoot two
slimes, you must dispose of the entrails
hanging down from the ceiling to do that,
shoot I hem from the left side. Then from
the right repeat until there aren't any more
slime-bags coming out, go left, take lift up
and re-charge, take lift back down.
Save here, go back to the right, take the
lift up and go right, pick up mouse and kill
the slime, pick up the key. open the door,
and go back to re-charge also save if nec-
essary (recommended!). Return to the door
and take the lift down, go right and dis-
pose of the 2 slimes (you might want to
use the exploding mice here, now you
know why there aren't any cats in this
game). Go right and roll through the force
field, leave atomic, charge and hit the
switch teleport back, go right and take lift
up, here you will see the final animation.
-
-
-
-
1 LI
v ui.si, >**■*■
-
As the intro sequence plays, I sit
back lazily into my armchair and
smile. I smile because as 1 look
onto the screen, my eyes are greeted with
a spectacle close enough to movie style
quality.
A ship hurtles towards the atmosphere,
an object is separated from the mothership,
this mothership is located on a new course,
the droid it deploys enters the atmosphere.
A relay of messages are sent between ships
floating in the Indian Ocean. The M.S.
Hurricane receives a message from the
M.S. Arizona and is deployed as the droid
tears into the ocean and disappears below
the surface.
Capt Dawnrazor is notified of the situ-
ation and as the droid docks onto a nuclear
research station 20,000 feet deep the Cap-
tain is flown to the station. The last words
he hears as he sinks into the murky depths
of the Indian Ocean are,"Be careful we
don't know what's down there, and by the
way, we think that the oxygen is running
out."
Deep Core is big. 1 mean big in all
standards of the word. Your character Capt,
Dawnrazor is a classy guy with his mus-
cle shirt and big guns. The dark tones of
the background and your character give
an air of mystery, and unforseeable dan-
ger. The backgrounds are drawn to perfec-
tion, air vents scatter a backdrop of air
bubble rising into oblivion and a matrix of
squares divided into smaller squares and
so on. The animation is smooth and the
scrolling is quick and keeps up to the
character.
The next article which win come to the
attention of your ears is the sound effects
and music. Deep Core doesn't have any
in-game music but the title screen has a
great beat. The sounds of your weapon
expelling its projectile which evolves into
a mass of gases and shrapnel as it comes
into contact with the aliens is well done.
The only other real noises are the occa-
sional doors and maybe a monster of an
alien coming down to greet you with open
cannons.
The thing which I found distressing
about a game with this much class is the
lack of documentation. After playing the
game for a few hours I realised that I knew
nothing of what I was picking up and
using. I couldn't figure out a lot of things
until I watched the title screen. This gives
you all the information you need the suc-
cessfully complete the game.
This game is a classic all round plat-
form game which will entice any gamer to
have a go and kill the aliens and save the
world. Again! It has everything a game
needs, but still, as most games do. lacks
originality and does get a tiny bit annoy-
ing after a few hours of death and carnage.
I mean how much can a human take?
Jt.RiS Gkaney
Ratings
Graphics
86%
Sound
65%
Game play
87%
Overall
89.5%
Distributed by
Hotpoint (02) 634 6499.
RRP $69.95.
AMIGA Review
73
Entertainment
MICHAEL SPITERI'S
$j®Btera^
a,
Welcome to that part of the maga-
zine where you can unashamedly state
that you are stuck neck deep in your
once favourite adventure or role play-
ing game, and are basically beyond
the point of no return. It is also the
part of the magazine where you can
air your grievances, trade and barter,
have a bit of a chin wag and be the
light at the end of someone's tunnel.
If you are stuck you can write to
one of our many Clever Contacts or to
Kerrie for one of her many free hint
sheets (check the list before writing
in). If that fails, drop me a line, and if
I can't find help for you among my
huge database of hints and tips then
I'll print your problem here for all to
see and hopefully a solution will be
forthcoming.
Feel free to send in your hints and
tips, your views and news, your ru-
mours and gossip, your complaints and
chatter, in fact if it's on the topic of
adventure and roleplaying games then
we want to hear about it!
The address to write to for adven-
ture hints, tips, problems, natter, chat-
ter, rumours, complaints, etc, is: Ad-
venturers Realm, 12 Bridle Place,
Pakenham, Vic 3810
Kamikaze Andy resides deep in his
Dungeon and he is our resident
roleplaying game expert (he is also
pretty cluey when it comes to games
in general). Drop Andy a line at:
Realms Dungeon, PO Box 1083, Can-
ning Vale, WA 6155.
Always enclose a stamped ad-
dressed envelope when writing to any
of the addresses published in this ar-
ticle.
Realm's Quite Clever Hint Disks
Not only are there two hint books,
but there are also two hint disks,
skillfully compiled by Graeme Beaven
(who is currently working on Volume
3 and public domain disk for the
Realm). Combine the two hint disks
to cover over 190 different adventure
and roleplaying games. Incredible, eh?
Orders are coming in thick and fast,
and for good reason of course as they
are the best dressed and most easy to
use hint disks ever.
Both features a very easy to use
interface that allows you to display
hints click of a button (volume 2 even
contains a swag of maps).
Absolutely packed to the last re-
maining sector with hints and maps,
each disk is priced at an absolute bar-
gain at just $7 (including p&p) or $5
if you supply the disk and stamped
addressed envelope. To order either
disk send a cheque to Michael Spiteri
for the required amount to Realm's
Hint Disk, 12 Bridle Place, Pakenham,
Vic 3810.
Hint
Sheets
Kerrie, the Lady of the Realm, is
slightly preoccupied this month (a lit-
tle helper is due any time now ... liter-
ally!) however she it still trooping
along in sorting out your hint sheet
requests and the service is just as
speedy as it ever was. If you would
like up to four of the hint sheets listed
below then drop a line to Kerrie' s
Free Hint Sheets, 12 Bridle Place,
Pakenham, Vic 3810. You must en-
close a stamped addressed envelope,
and please, don't forget to mention
the hint sheets you would like.
Hint sheets available are: Mortville
Manor/Maupiti Island, Monkey Island
I, Monkey Island n, Space Quest III,
Space Quest IV, Wonderland, Leisure
Suit Larry 3, Champions of Krynn,
Kings Quest V, Pool of Radiance, Zak
McKracken, Zork 1, Zork 2, Zork 3,
Bards Tale 1, Bards Tale 2, Bards
Tale 3, Hitchhikers' Guide to the Gal-
axy, Guild of Thieves, Jinxter, The
Pawn, Corruption, Faery Tale, Indi-
ana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,
Loom, Space Quest II, and the brand
new 1994 Clever Contacts Listing.
Realm's Jolly
Good Hint Books
There are two official hint books
available. Volume 1 contains hints and
tips to over 40 games, and Volume 2
contains hints and tips to over 25 ad-
venture and RPG games as well as
pages upon pages of mapping sheets.
Volume 1 is only $9 and Volume 2 is
only $10.
To order either book, drop a line to
Darrien Perry at 21 Darley Road,
Randwick, or give her a bell on
(02)3985111.
74
AMIGA Review
■
Entertainment
Realm's Trading Post
Sell, buy, swap, yell out for, search
and bargain. That's what happens here.
Free ads for used original games will
be published free of charge for one
month. Pirates get lost. The address
to write to is ... Realm's Trading Post,
12 Bridle Place, Pakenham, Vic 3810
Lucinda Kenward of 13 Gagarin
Street, Mudbury North SA has Ork,
Mega Twins, Terminator 2, Total Re-
call, Oxxonian and Pinball Fantasies
and will sell or swap for games like
Zak McKracken, Leisure Suit Larry,
and Bill Tomato Game (!). Lucina
would also like to know where she
can get hold of Epyx World Games.
She can be contacted on (08)3965073.
Tony Finn of BASC Dental Unit,
Simpson Barracks, Macleod, Vic 3085,
has a sealed copy of Wing Commander
($50), as well as Space Quest IV ($30),
Links Golf ($30), and Prince of Per-
sia ($25).
Andrew McCulloch of 33 Carvie
Street, Hillman WA has to sell or swap
Wing, Silent Service II, Red Service
Rising, Powermonger, Imperum and
Butilechess.
Peter Sinbandhit of 33 Waley Av-
enue, Bellambi, NSW 2518 has Ka-
rate King, Moonwalker, Vortex and
Datastorm at $ 1 each and Ninja Tur-
tles for $30, He will consider swap-
ping these games, so give him a bell
on (042) 853 848.
Clint Lowe of 7 Pauline Court, Kan-
garoo Flat Vic 3555, or phone (054)
478 907, has Nigel Mansell's World
Championship with all it's goodies for
just $40 and also TV Sports Baseball
for $35.
Mandy Huxley would like to pur-
chase original copies of the following
Amiga games ... Shadow gate, Deja
Vu, Uninvited and Dark Seed. You
can ring heron (002) 204 619 BH and
(002) 286 828 AH.
Garry Johnston of 122 Heber Street,
Moree, NSW 2400, phone (067) 521
687 has Civilization for $60 and
Drakkhen for $25.
Mark Beijer of PO Box 150,
Busselton, WA 6280 has for sale Ninja
Turtles, Street Fighter, Leather God-
desses of P hobos $10 each, Garftelds
Winter Tail, $15, Bill and Ted's Ex-
cellent Adventure, Hunt for Red Oc-
tober, Shadow Sorcerer, Ocean Ac-
tion Pack, Colorado, RBI Baseball 2,
3 Stooges, $25 each, Pit Fighter $35,
and finally, Operation Stealth and
Maniac Mansion for $40 each. Mark
will also swap Street Fighter 2, Guy
Spy, or Leander for Dark Seed, Fate
of Atlantis, Legend of Kyrandia, or A-
Train. Phew!
Doug Smith of 19 Hibiscus Av-
enue, Brooms Head NSW 2463 writes:
Australian Commodore & Amiga Review back issues still available
+ many more before June 1993 - Call for more info
June.1993VoM0No6 '
• 3D Animation with Aladdin • The Animate Workshop
• Disk Swapping •Deluxe Paint -Animating tn3fi .' ...
• Amos Column • Andy's Attic • CaiiDo'* Education-
World Construction Set • Ooaf - ArphS Channel* C64
■ Column • Ftot PD • Games- K6B, Fate - Gates oi
Dawn, Darkseed, Civilisation. Kings Quest Solution Part t
July 1993 Vol IB No 7
• flea! 3D;2:3 • Accelerators • Gcloen Gale
• MScrodeal Clarity » Home Accounts 2 • D Paint
Tutorial -Animation in 3C • Education -Rack to Basics
• Amos Column • SasiDb. • C64 • Andy's Attic* Hoi
PD • Games - Chaos Engine, Bearers, Sleepwalker,
V^Fnga, Solutions - SupafFrag and Kings Quest Part 2
August 1 993 Vol 10 Ho B[
• Show' Report • Vidi Amiga 12 • Final Copy II
•.'Amiga Games Console • Sound digitising • Intro- to
■ Desktop Video • Rypereacfie Professional • Education -
■ Aust Graphics Atlas • CanDO - Communications prop/an
and printer utility • OPaint Tutorial - Floatirg Baubles •.
C6<*Ccijnn • Arnas.Cdlumn* OpalPaint'3 Zap lunction
• Hoi PD* Games - Hired Guns, Trolls, Graham Goech
World Class' Cricket Solution - SuperFrogParO
September 1993 Vol 10 No 9
• A rt Expression - Pal nt Program • 6.S06Q - -he Nexi
. Generation* Power Copy Professional • Quarterback
Tools Deluxe •CanDO 2i5 Upgrade • DPa ; s; Tutorial
• Hot PD ■•' CS4 .Column • Amos Column - AMOS Pro
V.2 update and* Amos Fin Compiler • CanOn - Speech
Utility • Education - Back to Bas : cs Fractions • Andy's
Aftic - How to cteale a RAD rjrfye • Games - Creatures.
Flashback, SuperFrog, BodyBtnws; Dark Sersd - Solution '
OctobeM993 Vol ID No 10
• DPaint AGA »PC Task-MS-Dcs emulation • Ami-
Back Tools vs .Quarterback Tools Dewxe • Personal Faint
• Hot P D • .Blitz ' 'em - A ddm g comma nd s • Andy's Attic
-. Workbench Too Is • DPsintTu tori a; • Education Column
- Learn to'pjay thePiaho* CanDo - Make your, own -
Calendar* C64 - Graphics/Software •Games -Campo's
l.nf Rugby, Reach -or Ihe Skies, Project X Revised Ecition.
Syndicate, 'Sireo't. Fighter it, Dune il
November 1993 Vol 10 No 11
'• Brililance • Hoopy Paint -makes an artist of ever/one
' .'• Amiga on the Cfisap » fin ding cttsap equ iptsent * ¥irJeo
Tutorial to A12C0 • CED 3.5 • Frame Machine -Desk'op
Video • Education - Persona! Tutor • Blitz 'air- more
adding commands • DPaint -Ceil Aberration • ho! PD-
La'est Fish Disks • CanDo - Designing an animation
viewer • Amos - Getting into Assembly • C61 ■ seeking
software • Games - Pinoafl Fantasies, Desert Strike -
Return to the Gulf. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,
KGB - Full solution parti " " '
December 1993 Vol 10No 12
• Amiga CD32- an in depth look ■ Affordable Tape
Backup - SCRAM pius Tamberg • Bernoulli Mulliririve vs ■
S'yquest 105 - remoVeabte hard drive comparison • Next
Generation Graphics- EGS Spectrum •Education -'
Christmas gifts • Hoi PD*' Blitz 'am- mote clever '
ftrciia* i * CS4 - Modeming • CanDo - Foreign language
file converter • Games - Air Warrior. Two Player Games.
101 PD Games, KGB - Full Solution part 2, CD32 Games
Pjnfaal Fantasies-, Oscar- Diggers .
January 1994 Vol 11 No 1
• Palmtoo Computings Your Amiga -low price
a'fernatives to' an Amiga portable • Preview cf Final
Writer - Super. Enhanced Wordprocessing • What fe
Manual Doesn't Tell You - for beginners • -Deluxe' Music 2
- improves new version • QuieJtnet-- Delivers Network
Speed - anew peer-to-peer fieiwork.fibm a local developer
' • Understanding Libraries -Why libraries a-e so mpo-lsra
Show to manage them * CanDo • Getting koy input
• ;HoiPD r UleslPDi:Sbareware»'Amc5:New. :
extensions tor AMOS Pf6:*Blitt 'em -Zones bl'CQfttixi . .
• Andy's Attic- Ebony and Ivor/* CB4;Burn*perTips '■/■■
• Games - ACAR PD Games 2, Mean' Arenas, .Yd Joel, '
.CD32 Guickshots (D/Gener^tjoti, Whaie's Voyage Qvarkil)
February 1994 Vol 11 No 2
• Understanding Genlocks - a Geniock can be used for
more than title displays'* Final Writer; An in Depth iobk';
The I atesl . wo rd processor is almost DTP • CodlCat - your ;
0'iVn electronic puppet - cipad and animations • .
■Serviceman on a Disk -The Advanced Amiga Analyzer
traces faults fo; you •How Qufck is "Fast" -What to
expect when upgrading froma 68000 to an; A. 1230 ; ■
• C-Faint Tutoriai - Artist through the looking glass
. • Education - Malhmaster II • Hat PD'-i Latest PD and
Shareware *. CanDo -Electronic Log Book'* Amos -
Ha'ckingAMGSG'raphpModeS'»'Blltz.-.Wairite[>pfora : .
QUI utjfit/'* 06* -Graphics book and New PD Software ■
• Art Gallery • Games - isfiar 2 • Messengers of Doom',
Frontier ■ Site II, Dc'nk, Soccer Kid.' Bob's Bad Day,' ■ ■
Flashback - Soiution Part 1
S3 each in cWng postage. ■' '■
Send cheque or phone/fax credit card number.- : '
Saturday Magazine, Sl'Datley Ftd, Rand wi ck NSW 2 031 .
Ph (C 2 j 398 5 1 1 1 Fax ;02) 39S 5322^
AMIGA Review
75
Entertainment
"I have KGB, Lure of the Temptress,
Police Quest 3, Monkey island 2, Putty
and lots of others, all boxed and beau-
tiful, and would like to swap for Leg-
end of Ky reindict, Willy Beamish,
Wizkid, or anything decent. I also want
to get rid of 45 magazine coverdisks
full of playable demos of good com-
mercial games including the most re-
cent, and I'll sell these at blank disk
price in batches of 5. People should
get in touch before sending money
and enclose a S.A.E. if they want a
reply"
Mike: I think we should adopt
Doug's suggestion when dealing with
any ad in this area.
Clever Contacts
Clever Contacts are adventurers
who have freely donated their time
and efforts into answering adventure
queries put to them. They also make
great pen pals!
A complete listing of Clever Con-
tacts can be obtained by dropping a
line to Kerrie in the Free Hint Sheet
Dept.
New Clever Contact this month if
Joseph McElwee of 96 Beatrice Street,
Bass Hill, NSW 2197. Joseph can help
in approximately 50 different games
(too many to list!), but it does include
some very well known titles. Joseph
is also after hint sheets for Elvira 1,
Cadaver, Dungeon Master and Per-
sonal Nightmare to add to his collec-
tion.
Tony Finn is an existing Clever
Contact with a new address! Refer
Trading Post for details.
Clever Contact James Wilson is no
longer a Clever Contact, so please do
not write to him. James is no longer
an Amiga person, so thanks James for
your much needed efforts, I'm am sure
they were much appreciated!
Finally, make sure you enclose a
stamped addressed envelope and suf-
ficient funds for printing and photo-
copying and alcohol when writing to
a Clever Contact, and of course, many
thanks to all our volunteers around
the nation for doing such a fantastic
job.
The Adventure Problem
Centre
This is the part of the Realm were
problems are published and hints re-
vealed. If you were stuck a couple of
months back, you could find relief
here, today, now.
John San Diego writes ... "Con-
gratulations on the Adventurers Realm
Column - it's brilliant! Keep up the
good work. Anyway, I'm having a
problem with a game called Zak
McKraken. How do you get Zak up to
Mars? What are you supposed to do
with the bird in Lima? I've lured him
into the bird feeder with the bread
crumbs, and tried using the blue crys-
tal on him, but nothing happens. How
do you fly to the Bermuda Triangle?
I've bought the ticket, but every time
I walk in the gate to the planes Zak
just says "The plane's not here now."
And what are you supposed to do in
the temple in Mexico?"
Mike: Thanks for the compliments,
John. You seem to be having lots of
fun in Zak McKracken. You seem to
be doing the right thing so far with the
bird in Lima, however after you use
the blue crystal on the bird you have
to head to the Left Eye of the hill. In
the Mexico temple you have to search
around in the dark until you find a
light source. Then head to the center
of the temple (ie. head towards the
blue figures, not the green). This is
the beginning of your journey to Mars.
Maybe you've missed the plane, or
maybe you are too early. You've
stumped me there, John. Maybe some-
body can help out?
Stephen Downward and Clint Lowe
wrote to me separately, both stuck at
the same spot in Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade. Both are stuck in the
library and neither can seem to find
the "X". Well, the only thing I can
think of is maybe you guys need to
check some of the books in the li-
brary, still, any takers for this prob-
lem?
Doug Smith writes ... "Many thanks
for printing my request for help in
Fool's Errand and to Robert Holmes
for responding. It's surprising how
many people you run across who are
still beavering away at this brilliant
old game. It came out a few years ago
to very mediocre reviews but people
didn't give it enough credit for mak-
ing the power of the computer inte-
gral to the puzzles in the story. I've
always been a bit disgusted with soft-
ware that simply presents on compu-
ter what could far more easily be put
in a book. Exploiting the computer
novelty value but not being pretty
much the work of a lone enthusiast. I
suppose that the days of such people
in commercial software development
is nearly over.
I've seen a follow up to the game.
Does anyone know what the author,
Roger Miles, has produced since?"
Mike: Thanks for your letter Doug,
and also for the following help you've
given to the following troubled ad-
venturer.
Ben Christensen was stuck in Cruise
for a Corpse ... "Your clock will read
9.30 AM after you find the receipt.
Now talk to Suzanne, Tom, Julio,
Fabian a in that order and the clock
should stand at 10.00pm. Go to Julio's
cabin and find that key on the floor.
This is not a door key. Use it to find a
bracelet amongst other things. Exam-
ine the clasp carefully. This is vital
and easily missed."
Ben was also stuck in Kings Quest
2 ... "Ben's clue on the third floor is
that he must have a stout heart. As far
as I can recall this refers to the final
trial, confronting the ghoulish boat-
man, crossing the poisoned lake, pass-
ing the deadly briars and confronting
the horror that lurks in the castle. Be
sure to bring your mallet, stake and
cross and check under any pillows you
might find."
«>*
76
AMIGA Review
Entertainment
3 he
JJJcttrtctan
The Patrician is, perhaps, by deft
nitiori not a game I should be
playing. I am not by nature a
patrician. Indeed, the reverse.
Patrician is a game which has hon-
ourable antecedents. Years ago there
appeared on the Apple 11 a game which
won many hearts and minds called
Lemonade Stand. In it you traded your
way to a small fame and fortune by
making and selling lemonade.
After that came Shanghai which was
a great success. In that you traded around
Asia with some fighting thrown in
against the pirate junks. There was a
basic flaw in this game in that once you
had spotted how to move the trading
into a reverse cycle you quickly amassed
riches beyond the dreams of avarice.
The Patrician is the same game taken
up several levels to its intelligent limits.
Again, it is a trading game but this time
1 l
■-
I
-r- J
krwjfh: 8 «a
Ic.lJ: 28 t'UrJtfl
wy#S *I,B m
spee£ 9 kn
cre*c 4 »tn
price: 76^6 *\u&e.r
can be played with between one and
four people.
The scene is medi-
eval Germany during
the time that the
Hanseatic League had a
stranglehold on all trade
in Germany and most
of Europe. You start off
from one of the
Hanseatic ports and you
send your fleet out to
other ports trading and
bartering as you go, so
that you build up a large
fortune and retire to en-
joy the illicit pleasures
of the Reeperbahn in
Hamburg.
What is amazing about this game is
that the graphics are so good that they
lead to a suspension of disbelief and
you feel that you are,
indeed, trading. I
started playing after
supper one evening
and the light of dawn
let me know I had
played too long, at
which time I was
about to be appointed
the Patrician, or head
of the Hanseatic
League.
The game play in
Ratings
Graphics
85%
Sound
70%
Gameplay
80%
Overall
86%
Distributed by
Hotpoint (02) 634 6499
RRP $69.95.
this game is fair and balanced and if
you make a bum decision you quickly
suffer the consequences. You need to
balance exactly your trade goods with
your defences and make sure that you
only sell at a profit. Good training for
this game would be a visit to Paddy's
Market on a Sunday morning.
A word of warning, I was unable to
run the game from an Amiga 500 with-
out a hard disk. This may of course
have been bad luck with the disks, but
using the same set I loaded it onto an
Amiga 3000 with a hard disk, and ran
the game with no problems. O
Gareth Powell
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AMIGA Review
77
CD32 Entertainment
War, as we know, is hell. But
war on CD-Rom machines
is slightly less than hellish
because with a bit of intelligent fore-
thought you can always win.
Take Fire Force. This is a pretty
simplistic shoot-the-baddies game and
in no way makes use of the possibilities
of CD-Rom machines. On the other hand
if you regard it simply as a war game it
ain't bad. Indeed, quite playable.
You are part of a strike force which
is a lineal descendant of the Long Range
Desert Group. This commando force
functioned in the Western desert during
the second world war and waged a fero-
cious campaign behind the lines against
Rommel's forces.
The idea was that you had highly
trained, very motivated soldiers who
operated for lengthy periods of time
behind the enemy lines. It was found
that small numbers
worked best and the cur-
rent British equivalent
uses three-man teams.
Originally you roared
into action using armoured
cars but nowadays it is al-
most certain you will go in by helicop-
ter.
In the British SAS it is traditional
that soldiers can choose, within limits,
their own weaponry and this is true in
this game.
In real life in the SAS you would
probably chose a Hoch and Kepler
MP550A2 which comes from West Ger-
many and is a light and extremely accu-
rate machine pistol. You have this held
by two clips across the front of your
body. You would also probably carry a
Browning 9mm
automatic and two
or three grenades,
type depending on
the action you
were expecting.
fa Fire Force
you choose your
weapons before
each sortie and al-
though the H and
K is on offer the
smart move is to
chose the Soviet
ARM Assault. This is made in various
versions out of pressed steel and is not
highly accurate but will fire under all
conditions. Most importantly, most of
the rebel and terrorists forces around
the world use it and thus if you knock
over a rebel you can get more ammo.
In this game you go in single handed.
•;■■> p y
In all my time in the service I can only
remember this happening once. But. hey,
this is a game, right? And we can fight
any way we wish.
You are dropped in by helicopter ■
excellent realism here - into a hot zone
with guns free and you ran forward leap-
ing over land mines, avoiding grenade
bursts and dropping the enemy left,
right and centre.
Remember that a three shot burst, in
real life as well as in this game, will see
off anyone. And that the killing power
of a grenade has
been much over-
rated.
When choos-
ing your weap-
onry avoid the
grenades and go
for the C4 plastic
explosive. If you
see a building
which is suss a
block of C4 will
sort out the prob-
lem instanter.
The game lacks realism when it lets
you run past a machine gun tower with-
out getting zapped. In real life this is
not easy to do. A stream of tracer up
your backside from a mounted machine
gun is most discouraging. But in this
game you will probably get away with
it.
As you improve so
the missions get harder
and your chances of get-
ting zapped rise.
The programmers
seem to feel that if you
get a burst from a
Kalishnikov you can fix it with a field
medical dressing pack and then fight
on. Do not put this to the practical test
because it is, believe me, not bote.
So though this game tries to be real-
istic, for anyone who has ever heard
shots fired in anger it is plain that the
programmers have never seen real com-
bat. Which is a good thing.
That leaves a game which is good
fun to play and, at the end of the day,
nobody wounded or in serious strife.
Fire Force is a good game available
on CD-Rom disk. But it is not a CD-
Rom game. It would work just as well
from floppies.
Gareth Powell
Ratings
Graphics:
60%
Sound:
85%
Gameplay:
86%
Overall:
75%
Distributed by
Hotpoint (02) 634 649S
.
RRP $69.95.
78
AMIGA Review
CD32 Entertainment
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HflHflGES TERPY YORflTH
Twelve years ago sales of the
Commodore 64 - the machine
that preceded the Amiga - rock-
eted in Italy, The reason
was simple - a software
games publisher had put a
realistic game of socceT on
the screen.
The Italians are soccer-
mad in a way which is dif-
ficult to understand until
you have been to one of
their matches. These
games are a direct de-
scendant of Christians be-
ing thrown to the lions in
the Colosseum. Whether
the home team wins is of
far greater importance than
whether the lire collapses, Etna erupts
or Spain declares war on Italy. Foot-
ball is everything. Therefore the abil-
ity to replay matches with Italy play-
ing other, lesser, countries on a com-
puter was irresistible. The game sold
in its tens of thousands - and Commo-
dore reaped its reward.
Football fever, that desperate inter-
est in soccer as a religion rather than
as a game, can be found most places
in Europe. The wave of crazed inter-
est reaches its
peak during the
European Cup
when the names
of every player
and his potential
are known by
every fan
throughout Eu-
rope. You need to
keep this total
fascination with
the game of soc-
cer firmly in
mind when looking at Sensible Soc-
cer. This is very much a European
game and the instructions are in Eng-
®iK I
Ratings
Graphics
60%
Sound
85%
Gameplay
80%
Overall
78%
Distributed by
Hotpoint (02) 634 6499.
RRP $69.95.
lish, French, German and, of course,
Italian.
But it doesn't make enough use of
the CD-Rom technology available to
it. For this game is pretty much the
same as sold the Commodore in all its
numbers 12 years ago. Yes, there have
been a few changes.
You can select your national team
and make up your
mind who will
play at what posi-
tion.
I chose as my
opening team
Wales which has
never got very far
but keeps trying.
To give them a bit
of a run at the cup
I started them
against Switzer-
land, not a re-
nowned footballing nation. I chose the
weather as being fine - rare in Europe,
1 know, but who's in charge here, eh?
As the game starts you have one
view - high above the stadium where
you can see the players charging
around in not very well simulated mo-
tion. You control the players in your
team and each player has eight differ-
ent styles and direction of kick, and
controlling each player, although it
requires some practice, is not a skill
of a high order.
Whoever programmed this game
went for the easy options and did not
bother with details. For example, all
the players have white skin and black
hair. Watch any Euro-
pean football match
and you quickly real-
ise that a substantial
percentage of the top
players are coloured.
The angle of view
did not change, there
were no video clips of
realistic charging and
goal clearance. No in-
stant replays. No seri-
ously worthwhile
changes of point of
view.
My guess is that it
will be very popular with soccer fa-
natics who abound in Europe but for
Australians it is a low resolution, pretty
boring rendition of a game that has
been available on computers for some
years. Not one to get over-excited
about, though with two people play-
ing you can have some hours of fun.
Gaketh Powell
%
■if.
%
■t
*
.1 ^ £§,
' **
AMIGA Review
79
Entertainment
It may be that I am going quietly
mad but I totally enjoy playing
Zoo! on the 32 bit CD Rom Amiga.
I think I should keep quiet about it in
case my friends find out.
Zool the character is, I suppose, a
bit like a Ninja Turtle and is daft as a
brush. He is said to have come from
the Nth dimension and I have no prob-
lem with that.
Zool finds himself in a candy col-
our, tangerine flake, acid heaven where
he is being attacked by jellies who
are, in fact, as you will already have
guessed, Krool's Legionnaires in drag.
Some of these rotten swine have also
turned themselves into far-out bum-
ble bees and come zapping in when
your back is turned.
This program actually features a
real product - Chupa Chups - which is
credited with having sponsored the
game. This is the first totally spon-
sored game of its kind I have seen and
no doubt we will see more in the near
future.
There is an options screen where
you can select easy, normal or diffi-
cult and, at least in the early stages,
my advice is that you opi for easy.
There is also a way of increasing the
speed and the rate of braking. In every
case go for the lower option until you
have cracked the game and then ease
your way up to faster speeds.
What weapons does Zool have at
his disposal as he walks the Yellow
Brick Road towards the Good Ship
Lollipop?
The bomb which zaps anything in
your way comes in double handy. Bui
that which tickles my imagination is
the Twozool. This creates a
doppelganger, a shadow Zool, who
follows you faithfully and doubles
your chances of attacking and killing
the lust crazed jellies before they splat-
ter you.
You can play this game for ever as
there are many levels and dozens of
hidden features to be discovered.
It is passing strange that as soon as
I saw the packaging of the game I
knew f would hate it to death because
twee creatures do nothing for me. As
soon as I started playing it, however, I
was hooked and I would put this very
high on my list of playable games.
Zool was originally written for
floppies and has been ported over to
the CD-Rom and more could be made
of the real estate available on the disk.
Nevertheless less this is a bobby-daz-
zler of a game and could even lead
me to trying Chupa Chups.
GARETH POWELL
Ratings
Graphics
78%
Sound
73%
Gameplay
95%
Overall
95%
Distributed by
Logico (02) 519 6719.
Around $69.00.
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Webb Electronics 69
80
AMIGA Review
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A1200 749
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James Pond 2
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Elite II
Exile
Humans 1 & 2
Insight Technology
Microcosm
Summer Olympics
Surf Ninjas
Boot
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Champions
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